ir.WA 




Uass^ 



){)()K 



PRESENTED BY 



S PROPHE 



FUTURE UPS AND DOWNS IN PRICES. 



WHAT YEARS TO MAKE MONEY ON PIG-IRON, HOGS, CORN, 
AND PROVISIONS. 



By SAMUEL BENNER, 
An Ohio Farmer. 



"I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past " 

—Patrick Henry. 



FOURTH EDITION. 



CINCINNATI: 
KOBERT CLARKE & CO. 

1888. 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the j'ear 1875, 

By SAMUEL BENNER, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. 



Copyright, 1884. 

Gift 
Judge and Mrs. ^saac R. Hitt 
July 3, 1933 



DEDICATED 



< »RICULTURAL, MANUFACTURING, MTNTNG, MKRfiANTILK, 

INDUS I RIAL, FINANCIAL, AND COMMERCIAL INTER- 

Esrs OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



INDEX. 



PAGE 

Preface, ....... 7 

Introduction, ....... 10 

Predictions, ....... 13 

Pig-iron, ........ 30 

Hogs, ........ 56 

Corn, . . • 76 

Cotton 90 

Provisions, ........ 93 

Panic 96 

Theory, ........ 118 

Conclusions, ....... 125 

ADDENDA, 1884. 

Revision of this Work, ...... 132 

Prophecies Verified, ...... 135 

Signs of the Times, ...... 139 

Average Yearly Prices for Pig-iron, . . . 144 

Failures, ........ 144 

Railroad Stocks, ...... 148 

Miles of Railroad in U. S. . . . . . 153 

Winter Packing of Hogs— Net and Gross Cost, . . 155 

Corn, - . 157 

The Weather 158 

Stages of the Ohio River at Cincinnati, Ohio, . . 162 

Corn and Hogs, ...... 163 

Cotton and Crops, . . ... . . . 166 

Wheat, . 168 

Forecast for 1S87, ....... 171 

Forecast for 1888, ...... 176 



PEEFAOE. 



EN the following pages the object of the 
writer is to give brief, full, and clear ex- 
position of the ups and downs in prices for 
certain products and commodities in the mar- 
kets of our country, to all who are struggling 
in the same for a competence. 

To foresee the future intelligently in regard 
to supply and demand, production and con- 
sumption, is the great want that finance and 
commerce are to-day struggling and grappling 
with and striving to solve. 

The question of prices will always be of great 
interest to the producer and consumer. The 
spirit of the age is tending toward speculation 
in the products of the " Farm, the Mine, and 
the Factory," All business operations for 
profit and future contracts are attended with 
a great deal of risk, and the leading branches 
of trade demand information on the subject, 
and that the uncertainties of the future be 
lessened. 

There is always a hesitancy and a desire for 
further intelligence, in regard to engaging in 

(vii) 



Vlll PREFACE. 

any business where the chances for profit de- 
pend upon so many contingencies and circum- 
stances. 

The author, in presenting a practical book 
to the public on the subject, and on the 
branches of trade of which it treats, is in- 
spired with the belief that it will be the 
greatest boon to the reader to have the years 
of high and low prices pointed out in the 
future. 

It should be the highest aim of the farmer, 
manufacturer, and trader, in a business point 
of view, to penetrate the future and calculate 
what years he can realize the best prices' for 
his products. 

Content to be useful, instead of being volu- 
minous, the writer has confined the book to a 
few of the most important branches of trade. 
To have extended the work to the dimensions 
of embracing other branches would have made 
it more copious than the designed brevity of 
the book would admit. 

It is hoped that to this volume will be 
accorded the merit of directing more atten- 
tion to the ups and downs in prices, and the 
causes producing and influencing the same. 

And now, submitting the results of oui 
labor, experience, and observation to the in 



PEEFACE. IX 

dustry and commerce of the country, the 
author's wishes will be fully realized if this 
little volume contains any information which 
may be useful or of service to those interested, 



INTRODUCTION. 



^ttShe advance and decline in the average 
^^ price of pig-iron, hogs, corn, and provi- 
sions in the markets of our country, for a 
series of twenty years past, and for certain 
periods, have been as alternately certain as 
the diurnal revolutions of the earth upon its 
axis; and the periods of high and low prices 
have been as regular in rotation, as the an- 
nual return of the four seasons. 

Now, Reader: You who may study the ups 
and downs in prices as collated and consid- 
ered in these pages, and operate in accordance 
with the advance of prices and tendencies of 
the times, as here indicated, will surely- be 
successful; whilst those who stubbornly and 
blindly prosecute on the decline, will do an 
unprofitable business, and will meet with con- 
tinued disaster and loss. 

I am well aware that my prediction of the 
downward tendency in the prices of pig-iron, 
hogs, corn, and provisions, and dull trade for 
the next two years, will be to some as unwel- 



INTRODUCTION. It 

come as the tolling of the-fire bell at the hour 
of midnight; and to others as unexpected as 
was the approach of the Medes and Persians, 
under the walls of Babylon, to the banquetors 
at the royal board of Belshazzar ; but we can 
not be blamed for foretelling that which can 
not be averted and which past prices, and 
signs of the times indicate, and which a con- 
scientious conviction of duty compels us to 
predict, with the hope that our premoni- 
tion may serve to diminish disaster and save 
national and individual interests from ruin. 

I now at once make my predictions, and will 
endeavor to demonstrate their certainty and 
fulfillment to the comprehension of all, by an 
examination of past prices, and their bearing 
upon the future, as analyzed by the light of 
practical experience and sound analogy. 



PEEDIOTIOI^rS. 



PIG-IRON. 



E PREDICT that the average price of No. 1 
foundry charcoal pig-iron in the markets 
of our country will be lower in the year 1876 
than in 1875. 

I predict that the average price of No. 1 
foundry charcoal pig-iron in the markets of 
our country will be lower in the year 1877 
than in 1876, and that the daily price in some 
months of that year will run below twenty 
dollars per ton. 

I predict that the average price of No. 1 
foundry charcoal pig-iron in the markets of 
our country will be higher in the year 1878 
than in 1877. 

I predict that the average price of No. 1 
foundry charcoal pig-iron in the markets of 
our country will be higher in the year 1879 
than in 1878, notwithstanding the resump- 
tion of specie payments. 



14 benner's prophecies. 

I predict that the average price of No. 1 
foundry charcoal pig-iron in the markets of 
our country will be higher in the year 1880 
than in 1879. 

I predict that the average price of No. 1 
foundry charcoal pig-iron in the markets of 
our country will be higher in the year 1881 
than in 1880, and that the daily price in some 
months of that year will run above fifty dol- 
lars per ton. 

The average prices as determined for the 
" American Iron and Steel Association." 

HOGS. 

I predict that the average price of fat hogs 
in the markets of our country will be lower 
in the year 1876 than in 1875. 

I predict that the average price of fat hogs 
in the markets of our country will be lower 
in the year 1877 than in 1876. 

I predict that the average price of fat hogs 
in the markets of our country will be higher 
in the year 1878 than in 1877. 

I predict that the average price of fat hogs 
in the markets of our country will be higher 
in the year 1879 than in 1878, notwithstand- 
ing the resumption of specie payments. 

I predict that the average price of fat hogs 



PANIC. 15 

in the markets of our country will be higher 
in the year 1880 than in 1879. 

The average prices as determined by the 
" Cincinnati Price Current." 

PANIC. 

I predict that there will be great depression 
in general business, and many failures in the 
years 1876 and 1877, and that there will be a 
commercial revulsion, and a financial crisis 
in the year 1891. 

Here are twelve prophecies of certain 
events to take place in the future, and they 
are of no uncertain sound; either one of 
them, if taken advantage of, by large opera- 
tors and speculators, would make and save 
them millions of money, and would be of in- 
calculable benefit to every person in this 
country. To know when to shape our agricul- 
tural, manufacturing, and financial opera- 
tions, so as to secure the best markets instead 
of the worst, is the end much to be desired by 
all. 

These prophecies are made not upon sup- 
posed fanciful speculation, but from the testi- 
mony of twenty years' observation b}^ the 
writer, from living and experienced facts; 
from the yearly average prices compiled by 



16 benner's prophecies. 

recognized official authority, and by anal- 
ogy, relying upon "history to repeat it- 
self." 

The writer does not claim a "gift of 
prophecy," but he does claim a Cast Iron RuU 
that will do to keep in sight, and that future 
ups and downs of the markets, and high and 
low prices in certain products and commodi- 
ties, can be calculated for some years to come 
with as much certainty, and upon the same 
principle that an astronomer calculates an 
eclipse of the sun. 

It is not upon record that Joseph had 
Egyptian weather statistics, or tables of pro- 
duction and prices, to base his prediction 
and interpretation of Pharaoh's dream; but 
he relied upon divine power to fulfill his 
prophecy. On our part, we base our predic- 
tions upon the records of the past, and their 
relation to the future, as governed by the un- 
changeable laws of nature, and only rely upon 
providence for- their fulfillment to give us the 
continued regular progress and development 
of these laws, and to its usual dispensation for 
seasons to make large or small crops, and not 
on the peoples' efforts merely. 

The author firmly believes that God is in 
prices, and that the over and under produc- 



UPS AND nOWNS. 17 

tion of every commodity is in accordance 
with his will, with strict reference to the 
wants of mankind, and governed by the laws 
of nature, which are God's laws; and that the 
production, advance, and decline of average 
prices should be systematic, and occur in an 
established providential succession, as certain 
and regular as the magnetic needle points un- 
erringly to the pole. 

Are not all kinds of business at loose ends — 
astray, tossed on the tempestuous sea of un- 
certainty — from our imperfect knowledge of 
natural causes and the laws by which they 
operate; and our lack of accurate statistics 
of production and prices, a knowdedge of 
which would enable us to discover and estab- 
lish reliable rules for our guidance in the fu- 
ture? Is there anything certain and settled 
in farming, except that a broom-handle is a 
sure cure for hoven in cattle ! Are not farm- 
ers, furnace-men, manufacturers, traders and 
speculators at random, like a ship without 
compass or rudder ? Do not all operations in 
business depend for success upon a certain- 
number of fixed, reliable rules? The rules 
we have to commence and transact business 
upon are stereotyped rules, that " Honesty is 
the best policy ; " that industry, energy, per- 



18 benner's peophecies. 

severance, prudence, economy, and so on, lead 
to riches and competence. These are all good 
enough m their line, and indispensable to 
success, but are they all-sufficient ? Is this 
knowledge all that is absolutely required for 
successful business in every department of 
trade? Is there not a knowledge of some- 
thing more which a business man wants? 
And who is not a business man ? In order to 
guide him in reference to future prices that 
are to rule in the markets of our country, 
we can not close our eyes and ignore the fact 
that tl>ere is a want of rules by which to in- 
terpret the " signs of the times," and to ena- 
ble us to comprehend the future status of the 
markets, so we may know six months or a 
year ahead what are to be the conditions and 
circumstances that will produce the coming 
ups and downs in prices for any product or 
commodity, and when the changes from high 
and low prices are to take place. 

How are we to get this information, this 
insight into, or foresight of the future ? 

Do the Records of the Weather Give the liulef 

In seeking to forecast future prices of agri- 
cultural products, the weather is an impor- 



UPS AND DOWNS. 19 

tant element of uncertainty. With the rap- 
idly increasing means of observation, and the 
deep interest taken by governments and 
scientists every-where in the laws of climate, 
the development and path of storms, nature 
of calmSj theory of winds, movements of 
masses of hot and dry air, and the phenom- 
ena of rain and snow, we may in time learn 
to calculate with certainty what years will 
be dry or wet ; when we may expect years of 
heat, storm, and cold; but with all the 
weather statistics of the past, tables of meteor- 
ology, and not excepting the weather wisdom 
of almanac makers, it will not come within 
the province of this work to lay down rules 
by which to forecast the future of the 
weather. It will require time, research, with 
improved means, and a more complete series 
of meteorological and climatological observa- 
tions to form a system of probabilities that 
can be useful ; and when the weather proba- 
bilities are reduced to a science, it will then 
be a long step to determine agricultural pro- 
ductions and prices from them; and if the 
time should come when the weather bureau 
at Washington can predict twelve months 
ahead instead of twenty-four hours, we can 
then know in advance what the seasons are 



20 BENNER's PEOPHECIES. 

to be, the number of bushels or pounds of any 
thing to be produced, what prices will rule ; 
and we can all make money. 

It will not be one of the points of this 
book to determine the causes of things, or the 
conditions and elements which will produce 
the coming ups and downs in prices; with 
these questions these prophecies have nothing 
to do; it will only come within its sphere to 
ascertain and point out the periodical return 
of effects, in the changes from high and low 
prices. 

We know the effects as manifested in the 
ups and downs of average prices, and good 
and bad trade, and it seems as though there 
ought to be an established cause to produce 
results of so much certainty, periodicity, and 
alternate regularity. 

The difficulty encountered in determining 
the causes producing the changes in produc- 
tion and prices is, that we are compelled to 
reason a posteriori, from effect to cause, and 
"what can we reason but from what we 
know." All original causes are invisible, and 
that which is rendered visible through devel- 
opment is an effect ; the cause must exist an- 
tecedent to the effect. The manner in which 
causes and their laws operate to produce these 



UPS AND DOWNS. 21 

effects may be found in our solar system, upon 
which we hereafter give some theories. All 
nature is found to be the servant of law : 
spring, summer, autumn, and winter succeed 
each other in unchangeable regularity, and 
the recurrences of the various convulsions of 
nature are being determined on scientific 
principles; none of these things happen by 
chance, but all of them by some law which 
will shortly be solved ; and when the causes 
producing the changes in the weather, and 
the operations of their laws are better under- 
stood, we may be then better able to discover 
their influence on the state of business in 
manufacture, trade, and commerce; then we 
may be enabled to fathom the conditions and 
elements that will produce the coming ups 
and downs in prices which are to rule in the 
markets of our country. 

Do the Statistics of Production Give the Rulef 

To ascertain when the changes from high 
and low prices are to take place : 

Who is it that can tell us what is to be the 
production of corn, cotton, wheat, tobacco, or 
any product that grows from the ground, and 
is dependent upon the season foi the life or 



22 , BENNEr's PROPHECIES. 

death of the plant ? No one ; after they have 
gathered and collected all the infornriation ob- 
tainable in regard to the acreage to be planted 
or sown, the seasons make large or small 
crops, and not the farmers. 

A cold, wet spring through the months of 
April, May, and June, is almost fatal to the 
corn, cotton, tobacco, and other plants. Also 
a dry, hot summer, has the effect to destroy 
the growing stocks. Floods and early frosts are 
great destroyers of the cereals in our northern 
latitudes ; either one of these elements oper- 
ating diminishes the number of pounds or 
bushels, and produces short crops ; therefore, 
we can not beforehand determine what will 
be the production of any year b}^ that which 
has been planted or sown. 

Statistics of agricultural products or manu- 
factured commodities are generally too late to 
be available for present use; they come after 
a person has made their investment or dis- 
posed of their property. Agricultural statis- 
tics, as generally compiled at Washington, 
tell the farmer the aggregate amount or num- 
ber of bushels produced six months or a year 
after their crops have been harvested and 
8old. 

Statistics of production, either estimated or 



UPS AND DOWNS. 23 

sold for consumption, are not sufficient to 
operate upon; one is too soon, the other too 
late. 

Commercial estimates are too high. 

The future can not be calculated upon in- 
telligently by agricultural statistics. The 
reason why they are not reliable is, that they 
are not given in by farmers correct : one far- 
mer will think it has something to do with 
taxes, and he will give them in low; another, 
to magnif}^ the yield of his farm, and other 
purposes, will give them in high ; therefore, 
they can not be a criterion for future calcula- 
tion and prices. 

Again, statistics of what has been produced 
may vary considerably from the available 
supply. We can not make any correct esti- 
mate or compile any statistics of what has 
been done with a crop. The corn crop of one 
year may not feed more than two-thirds of 
the stock that the crop would of another 
3^ear. 

Statistics of foreign exports are not to be 
depended upon. The estimated aggregate 
amount of the yearly production of any crop 
or manufactured commodity, does not from 
year to year approximate any regularity of 
increase or decrease that indicates future pro* 



24 benner's prophecies. 

cluction; and therefore the course of future 
prices can not be determined by them. 

Statistics are generally huge columns of 
figures, of which no one knows all the chan- 
nels from whence they came, all the clerical 
errors in their compilation, and parties inter- 
ested in their manipulation. 

In attempting to explore and explain the 
elements in these statistical tables and prob- 
lems of which people think are few and eas- 
ily read, the real supply and demand will be 
as unfathomable as the waters of the briny 
deep. 

Does the Price Give the Ride? 

The price of any product is the exponent 
of the accumulated wisdom of the country in 
"regard to the available supply and prospec- 
tive demand for that product; and as the 
price advances or declines, so it indicates the 
surplus or deficit of any product or commod- 
ity. 

The daily price is always known in the 
markets. There may be incidental causes, 
which are always producing slight and tem- 
porary fluctuations in value. The variation 
in price in one locality from another may be 
found in the cost of transportation or other 



UPS AND DOWNS. 25 

Local causes. The price is always known; 
the amount of any product and the demand 
for the same, is not so easily obtained. The 
books are always posted in regard to price, 
but several pages behind on amount of prod- 
uct available and the demand for the same. 
The price is the index of the probable amount 
of any product or commodity that is demanded 
for general consumption. 

The price which an article will command 
to-morrow or next week can not always be 
known, as there are eo many contingencies to 
cause temporary fluctuations in the markets. 
One or more of the various products may be 
manipulated so as to influence the price to 
advance or decline for a short time, but specu- 
lators can not influence any market only tem- 
porarily. 

It is not within the wisdom of finite beings 
to comprehend all the temporary circumstan- 
ces connected with prices, as governed and 
influenced by supply and demand, weather 
and seasons, combinations and corners, longs 
and shorts, puts and calls, and bulls and bears 
to operate upon the market. 

Now as the temporary price is uncertain, 
let us look further into the subject of prices 
to find a rule, and take the average to ascer- 



26 benner's prophecies. 

tain if there is any regularity existing in the 
run of the markets. As prices of agricultural 
products are governed by production, and pro- 
duction is governed by the seasons, and as it 
takes the four seasons to determime the abund- 
ance or scarcity of a crop; therefore we are 
compelled to take the jeavly average price to 
get above and bej^ond the control and influ- 
ence of speculators, manipulators, and corners 
upon the market. 

The yearly average price is ascertained by 
taking the price each day, week, or month, at 
one or more of the markets where the articles 
are bought and sold, and by adding the whole 
together, and then dividing by the number 
of times taken, the quotient Avill give the 
average for a year. 

When the yearly average price is very low 
for any product or commodity, and next yeai 
advances, and so on until it reaches the high- 
est average, is that which is here denomi- 
nated an "ttp.?" When the average price de- 
clines from one year to another to the lowest 
average, is that which is here denominated a 
''downf'' 

The "ups and downs" of yearly average 
prices, in a series of years for some articles, 
are very noticeable ; and it can be observed 



UPS AND DOWNS. 27 

that it takes a required number of years to- 
complete an "up and down." 

Now to find a rule that can give us any fore- 
sight of future markets, we must look to the 
past ups and downs of average prices; then, 
ascertain how many years it takes to complete 
an up and down in any product or commodity^ 
then determine in what order the ups and 
downs are repeated in the next cycle ; and if 
there is found any noticeable periodicity in, 
cycles, then we have a rule which can be 
applied to the future. An up and down or a 
down and up in average prices, is in this- 
book denominated a cycle. 

The cycles in yearly average prices 

Gives Us The Rule. 

The indubitable evidences and testimonies^ 
of observation have established this rul(^ as 
the safest we have ever practiced and have- 
ever found adapted to this purpose. And in- 
side of this rule, like a wheel within a wheel^ 
is to be found our "Cast Iron Rule," which is 
that one extreme invariably folloios another, as can 
be witnessed in all the operations of nature,, 
in all the business affairs of man, and in all 
the ramifications of trade and industry; an(J 



28 benner's prophecies. 

in every cycle of average prices it is shown to 
what extent these extremes run. This rule 
when applied to pig-iron, hogs, corn and provi- 
sions, is as persistent as the attractive and re- 
pulsive forces of the magnet, and as unchange- 
able as the laws of the Medes and Persians. 

This knowledge of the years in which high 
and low prices return in the markets, belong 
to the farmer, manufacturer, and legitimate 
trader, as well as the speculator ; and it is as 
important that this intelligence should be 
known to one as to the other. 

The ups and downs in prices, as considered 
in this book, have reference to a series of years 
as distinguished from the daily and weekly 
fluctuations. War, panic, and elections have 
not changed the general yearly course of prices 
in some articles for many years past ; and we 
only go back so far as we have been enabled 
to obtain reliable yearly average prices, or the 
official records of monthly prices at New York, 
and from them we can date their unfolding, 
and since that time establish by our rule the 
full development of our system of prophecy. 

It is not necessary for us to look beyond the 
present century, or to the historj^ of prices in 
older countries, for epochs of abundance and 
scarcity, to prove recurring cycles in prices. 



UPS AND DOWNS. 2& 

The alternation of good and bad harvests is 
well known in English histor}^ " Tooke " 
published a history of prices in 1838, giving 
an exhaustive analysis of the causes producing 
abundance and scarcity in crops in the eight- 
eenth century, but did not establish any rule 
by which the future course of prices could be 
arithmetically calculated. 

It is to the present nineteenth century, and 
in the land of free America, the most favored 
nation upon the earth, that divine providence 
has arranged this matter, for not only the 
spread of the true principles of religion and 
liberty, but the full development of the 
operations of the unchangeable laws of nature 
around and about us. 

The battles of Lexington, Concord and Bun- 
ker Hill, the centennial of which we celebrated 
in 1875, was the commencement of our strug- 
gles for freedom from the tyrannical yoke of 
England. The War of 1812 was the final con- 
summation of our independence in the arts 
and sciences, commerce and politics ; and. the 
period in our history after which we can date 
the development of the reaper and mower, 
sewing-machine, grain elevator, power loom, 
cotton gin, stereotype, steam printing press, 
railroad, steamboat, electric telegraph, the 



^0 benner's prophecies. 

xiompilation of average prices, new elements 
•and sciences, and a multitude of inventions 
and discoveries for the advancement of man 
in his onward path of progress, and in the 
knowledge of the ways of an inscrutable provi- 
dence. 

Now instead of pondering over farmers' de- 
liveries, weekly receipts, visible supplies, and 
•entering into an expensive collection and 
elaborate examination of statistics of what 
the probable production of pig-iron, corn, and 
hogs will be, and the commercial demand for 
the same, and what old elements will be want- 
ing and new ones to be developed, and watch- 
ing and waiting to hear from New York, let 
us call history to the witness stand, and see 
what it has to testify on the subject ; and also 
bring into court the testimony of observation 
and experience, by taking the course of the 
averages in past markets, as compiled by reli- 
able and official authority ; and also the years 
in which money has been made and lost in 
the difierent branches of trade, and then by 
our rule make the application for the future 

PIG-mON. 

The following statement, prepared by Hon 
Henry C- Carey, in 1849, embraces all that is 



PIG-IRON. 31 

definitely known of the progress of the iron 
industry in this country prior to 1854. 

Mr. Carey^s Pig-iron Statistics. 

In 1810 the whole number of furnaces in 
the Union was 153, yielding 54,000 tons of 
metal, equal to 16 pounds per head of the pop- 
ulation. 

In 1821 the manufacture was in a state of 
ruin. 

In 1828 the product had reached 130,000 
tons, having little more than doubled in 
eighteen years. 

In 1829 it was 142,000. Increase in one 
year nearly ten per cent. 

In 1830 it was 165,000. Increase in two 
years more than 25 per cent. 

In 1831 it was 191,000. Increase in three 
years about 50 per cent. 

In 1832 it was 200,000, giving an increase 
in three years of above 60 per cent. 

In 1840 the quantity given by the census 
was 286,000, but a committee of the Home 
League, in New York, made it 347,700 tons. 
Taking the medium of the two, it would give 
about 315,000 tons, being an increase in eight 
years of 50 per cent. 



82 BENNER's PROPHECIES. 

In 18^:2 a large portion of the furnaces were 
closed, and the product had fallen to probably 
little more than 200,000, but certainly less 
than 230,000 tons. 

In 1846 it was estimated by the Secretary 
of the Treasury at 765,000 tons, having 
trebled in four years. 

In 1847 it was supposed to have reached the 
amount of not less than 800,000 tons. 

In 1848 it became stationary. 

In 1849 many furnaces being already closed, 
the production of the present year can not be 
estimated above 650,000 tons; but from the 
accumulation of stock, and the difficulty of 
selling it, it is obvious that the diminution 
will be greater. 

The above statement, it will be observed, is 
only statistical in regard to production, al- 
though it is stated that in 1821 the manufac- 
ture was in a state of ruin ; and in 1842 a 
large portion of the furnaces were closed. 
This probably was in consequence of low 
prices that prevailed at this time. 

In the report of the Secretary of the Treas- 
ur}^ for 1863, the only official source for aver- 
age prices since the war of 1812, or the panic 
of 1819, and prior to 1844, that I am able to 
obtain, is, however, sufficient for our purpose ; 



PIG-IRON. 33 

it is recorded that 1825, '26, and '27 were 
years of very high prices in pig-iron; after 
these years the price declined, the tariff of 
twelve and one- half dollars per ton was re- 
duced in 1833, and in the year 1834 the price 
had declined to a very low figure for that 
time. Business was depressed in all branches 
of trade; the aggregate amount of duties on 
all imports were the lowest that had been col- 
lected for many years before that year; this 
date is forty-two years ago, and I commence 
my table of the ups and downs in prices of 
pig-iron at this time. 

The finance report of 1863, in giving prices 
for the New York market, states that in 1836 
there was a material rise in prices in all arti- 
cles, especially pig-iron, which is quoted at 
sixty dollars per ton; and in 1837 the price 
advanced to seventy dollars per ton for Scotch 
pig, which was an extremely high price, and 
three years from the low prices of 1834. 

The panic in money caused the suspension 
of specie payments by the banks in May, 
1837, yet the price of pig-iron had commenced 
to decline in March of that year, before the 
panic had cast its blighting shadow over the 
country. 

In the years 1838, '39, '40, '41, and '42 the 
3 



34 benner's pkophecies. 

price continued to decline, and 1843 was a re- 
markable year for the extreme depression in 
prices that prevailed for all staple articles. 
Scotch pig was quoted in September of that 
year as low as twenty-two and one-half dollars 
per ton ; this low price was six years after the 
high prices of 1837. 

In the year 1844 the price commenced to 
advance, and in 1845, in the month of May, 
the price is quoted at fifty-two and one-half 
dollars per ton. The price had increased thirty 
dollars per ton in twenty months. The max- 
imum price was reached in a few months less 
than two years from the minimum price of 
1843— mark this! 

Yearly average prices in Philadelphia of 
No. 1 Anthracite foundry pig-iron, from 1844 
to 1874, both years inclusive ; and production 
of pig-iron from 1854 to 1874 as compiled for 
the American Iron and Steel Association. 





PIG-IRON. 




4.BLE OF YEARLY AVE 


RAGE PRI 

TONS, 


YEAE. 


FRICE. 


1844 . 


. 25f . . . 


1845 . 


. 29} . . 




1846 . 


.27^.. 




1847 . 


. 30} . . 




1848 . 


. 261 




1849 . 


. 221 




1850 . 


. 20| . . 




1851 . 


. 21t 








1852 . 


22f 








1853 . 


. 36i 








1854 . 


365 






736,218 


1855 . 


27i 






784,178 


1856 . 


27i 






883,137 


1857 . . 


26f 






798,157 


1858 . 


22} 






705,094 


1859 . . 


23f 






840,627 


1860 . . 


22f 






919,770 


1861 . . 


20} 






731,544 


1862 . . 


23i 






787,662 


1863 . . 


35} 






947,604. 


1864 . . 


59} 






1,135,996 


1865 . . 


46J . 






931,582 


1866 . . 


465 . 






1,350,343 


1867 . . 


44i 






1,461,626, 


1868 . , 


39} . 






1,603,000. 


1869 . . 


40f . 






1,919,641. 


1870 . . 


33} . 






1,865,000. 


1871 . . 


35i . 






1,912,608 


1872 . . 


m . 






2,854,558. 


1873 . . 


42f , 






2,868,278. 


1874 . . 


30} . 






2,689,413. 



35 



36 benner's prophecies. 

The following are the high and lxj& pAc&A 
years in which are the highest and lowest 
monthly averages, which shows whon the 
changes commence in the ups and downs of 
the markets for pig-iron. 

In Finance Report the highest daily price 
in 1837, was, in January, 70 doUais per ton. 
In report of the Secretary Iron and Steel As- 
sociation, the highest monthly avtirages are 
as follows : 

1845, May, 34 J dollars per ton. 

1854, June, 38 " ^* 

1864, August, 73f " 

1872, Septemher, 53^ " " 

The Finance Report gives the lowest daily 
price for, 1834, in April, 38 dollars per ton; 
for 1843, in July, 22J dollars per ton. 

In report of the Secretary Iron and Steel 
Association, the lowest monthly avenjges are 
as follows : 

1850, July, .... 20 dollars per ton. 
1861, October, . 18f " 
1870, December, 31J " " 

After the liigh priced year 1845, the price 
of pig-iron declined, and in 1846, '47, '48, '49, 
it continued on the downward scale; and in 
1850, the average by the table is 205 dollars 
per ton, making five in number of declining 



PIG-IRON. 37 

years since 1845, and recording severe iepres- 
sion in the iron trade, following the depres- 
sions of 1834 and 1843. 

Our war with Mexico in 1846, '47, '48, and 
the influx of gold from California, did not 
have the effect of changing the direction of 
the price of iron, as it continued to decline 
during the war and after peace was declared. 
After the 3^ear 1850 the price again advanced 
in 1851, '52, '53 and in 1854, the price reached 
the high average of 36 dollars per ton, making 
four years of advances from 1850. 

The uncertainty of all manufacturing busi- 
ness, especially the manufacture of pig-iron, 
for the want of general knowledge when the 
periodical decline in price is to commence — 
of which it seems our sharpest and most ex- 
perienced men have made mistakes, as serious 
and fatal as persons of less pretensions, experi- 
ence, and business qualifications — is exempli- 
fied in the following : 

The Iron King of the Hanging Rock iron 
region in Ohio, in the year 1854, was so led 
astray by success and fortunate operations in 
making pig-iron, as to order wood chopped 
and ore mined the fall and winter of that year, 
sufficient, it was claimed, to run a certain fur- 
nace the succeeding year " thirteen months out 



38 benner's prophecies. 

of twelve.''^ As pig-iron at fifty dollars per ton 
would make all furnace owners rich, it was 
surely the veritable " Alladin's Lamp," and it 
was only necessary for furnace men to touch 
King Pig-iron and, " mirabile didu,^^ up would 
come the oriental genii with untold wealth. 
But alas ! what of the times ? Had the chances 
been studied, or were furnace men courting 
the "delusive phantom of hope" and blind- 
folding themselves ? What did the balance 
sheet of that year show? A loss of fifteen 
thousand dollars. And why? Because the 
price of pig-iron had tumbled in obedience to 
the effects and mandates of that uniform, uni- 
versal and inexorable law of over-supply and 
under-demand. 

There were a host of furnace men at that 
time whose thoughts were in the same chan- 
nel, and who claimed that iron was the scep- 
ter to wield and control the commerce of the 
world; and demanded fabulous prices for their 
furnace property, ignoring and forgetting the 
records of past history, that iron has its upg 
and downs like other articles of manufacture; 
and that its power to control is as potent on 
the decline as when on the advance. And in 
that year 1855, without their consent and 
beyond their control, and in accordance with 



\ 



PIG-IRON. 39 

an established natural rule, their pig-iron was 
left " high and dry," and as time glided along 
in the seven succeeding years, their property 
would not sell for one -half the sum that before 
a reasonable price demanded. The business 
became prostrated, and furnace men lost stacks 
of money ; the great majority of owners were 
compelled to realize on their stacks of pig-iron 
and sacrifice their furnace property to keep 
out of bankruptcy. The price continued to 
decline to the year 1861. The writer knew 
of merchantable hot blast charcoal pig-iron 
selling as low as thirteen dollars per ton 
during the winter of 1860 and '61, in the city 
of Cincinnati. The seven years from 1854 to 
1861 were very disastrous to the iron trade, 
and prostrated more furnaces than any period 
of declines in the history of this country. 

The commercial reaction and financial diffi- 
culty of 1857, produced a general calamity; 
paralyzed the hand of industry and cramped 
the energies of the people for four long con- 
tinued years after that revulsion. 

In the fall of 1860 the banks of Baltimore^ 
Philadelphia, Richmond and other southern 
cities suspended, and in the spring of 1861 
the war of rebellion burst upon us like a clap 
of thunder in a clear sky, creating terrible 



40 benner's prophecies. 

disturbance in all the ramifications of busi* 
ness, stopping the wheels of commerce and 
producing general consternation and stagna- 
tion in the iron trade. 

I assert it here as a stubborn fact, as show- 
ing my faith in these cycles, that if the war 
of rebellion had commenced in 1854 or in 1864, 
the general course of prices for pig-iron would 
have been downward in the following seven 
years after 1854 and the following six years 
after 1864, succeeding the same condition to 
eras as the price after 1845 declined five years 
during the Mexican war of 1846, '47 and 
'48; however, the price would not have ruled 
so low in 1861 and 1870 as it did in 1850. And 
I also assert as an unquestionable fact, that if 
we had not have had the war of rebellion from 
1861 to 1865, the price of pig-iron nevertlieless 
would have advanced in the years 1862, '63 
and '64, although the price would not havo 
reached so high an average as it did in these 
years. 

These assertions coincide with our remarks 
heretofore, that war, panic, and elections do 
not change the general course of prices in 
their cycles ; however, it may be that war and 
commercial revulsions are coincident with the 
advance and decline of the price of pig-iron in 



PIG 'IRON. 41 

the present century. Now, again we have 
seen the price decline in 1865, ^Q6, '67, '68, '69 
and '70. Six years of decline, although the 
averages do not run so low as they did from 
1854 to 1861. 

Again the price takes the ascending scale 
in 1871, and scarcely two years from the mini- 
mum price of 1870 reaching the maximum in 
1872, when the average of forty eight dollars 
is recorded. Mark this advance, and remem- 
ber the twenty months' advance from 1843 to 
1845! The present cycle commencing with 
the advance of 1871 and '72, and continuing 
with the declines of 1873, '74 and '75, brings 
us up to the present year 1876. 

In the table of yearly average prices for 
the year 1847, the price is higher than in 
1846. The Financial Report gives the price 
lower in 1847 than in 1846 — there appears 
this discrepancy between these two authori- 
ties. Also for the year 1858 the price is 
lower than in 1859; which probably was 
occasioned by the panic in the fall of 1857, 
depressing the price in 1858 for a short time 
below its natural and proper position. And 
in 1865 we also notice the price depressed a 
fraction below the price of 1866. And again, 
in 1868 the price is lower than in 1869. These 



42 benner's prophecies. 

irregularities in the years of declines, if not 
errors in compilation, are likely effects of ac- 
cidental and temporary causes. In the years 
of advance in the price of iron, we have none 
of these irregularities. 

It has been within the experience and ob- 
servation of the writer; and as for himself re- 
quires no authority for the information that 
the price of pig-iron was very high in the 
years 1837, 1845, 1854, 1864, and 1872, and 
that these years were the highest priced years 
since 1834; and also that the iron trade was 
severely depressed in the years 1834, 1843, 
1850, 1861, and 1870, and that these years were 
the lowest priced years since 1834. 

Now we have our data; having traveled 
over the facts in a voyage of discovery and 
secured our evidence, let us form our cycles 
and see if we can make out a rule. Com- 
mencing with the low priced year, 1834, we 
have stated that the price advanced three 
years to 1837; declined six years to 1843, 
making a cycle between low prices of nine 
years. Again the price advanced two years to 
1845, and declined five years to 1850, making 
a cycle of seven years. Again advanced four 
years to 1854, and declined seven years to 1861. 
making a cycle of eleven years. Again ad- 



PIG-IRON. 43 

vanced three years to 1864, and declined six 
years to 1870, making a cycle of nine years. 
Again advanced two years to 1872, and de- 
clined three years to 1875. 

It will be noticed that the years of advances 
are as follows : 3, 2 — 1, 3, 2. The declines are- 
6, 5 — 7, 6, and 3, up to the present, denoting 
that the present declines are not full by two- 
years, of which it is necessary to have a cy- 
cle of seven years in its order between low 
prices. Unless history in detail does not repeat 
itself, the future can not be judged by the- 
past, and all human calculations as to cycli- 
cal movements in prices are as naught; and 
there is not any thing sure and certain for 
man at the present day and age but death 
and taxes. 

We have so far but three years of decline- 
from the high prices of 1872, and if the cycle 
of seven years, from 1843 to 1850, is to make' 
its periodical return, and be repeated in its 
natural order of two years of advance and five 
of decline, then the cycle of seven years be- 
tween low prices in its order is to be filled up 
from 1870 to 1877; and, therefore, we must 
have two years more of decline after 1875 to 
fill up the cycle, and we have no doubt but 
that "history will repeat itself" here as it has- 



44 BENNER'S PROPHECIES. 

done in other cycles which will verify and es- 
tablish the accuracy of our prophecy. 

Let us return to 1837, after which there are 
six years of decline to 1843, and two years of 
advance to 1845, making a cycle in high 
prices of eight years. Again the price de- 
clines five years to 1850, and advances four 
years to 1854, making a cycle of nine years. 
Again the price declines seven years to 1861, 
and advances three years to 1864, making a 
<;ycle of ten years. Again declines six years 
"to 1870, and advances two years to 1872, mak- 
ing a cycle of eight years. Again declines 
three years to 1875, requiring two years more 
of decline, and four years of advance to make 
a cycle of nine j^ears, the next cycle in its 
order, which cycle in high prices ends in the 
year 1881, this year will be the next highest 
priced year for pig-iron. 

The following scale will enable the reader 
to better understand the different cycles in 
high and low prices, and the order in which 
thoy return. 



PIG-IRON. 



4B 




fe 



s 



s 



THE PAST. 


trps. 


DOWNS. 


1&S5 


1838 


3 3836 


1839 


1837 


ft 1840 
" 1841 






1842 




1843 


9 1844 

^ 1845 


1846- 


1847 




5 1848 




1849 




1850^ 


1851 


1855 


.1852 
^ 1853 


1856 


1857 


1854 


7 1858 




1859 




I860. 




1861 


1862 


1865 


3 1863 


18G6 


1864 


ft 1867 
^ 186& 






1869 




1870 


9 1871 


1873 


^ 1872 


1874 




1875 


THE FUTURE. 


1878 


1876 


4 1879 
^1880 


1877 




1881 


1882 




1883 




1884 




7 188& 




1886 




1887 




1888 


1889 




31890 


1892 


1891 


1893 




ft 1894 
^ 1895 




9 1898 
-^1899 


1896 


1897 



46 benner's prophecies. 

At the bottom of the scale is shown the 
iowest priced years, 1834, 1843, 1850, 1861, 
1870; and in the future 1877, 1888, and 1897. 

At the top are the highest priced years, 
1837, 1845, 1854, 1864, and 1872; and in the 
future, 1881, 1891, and 1899. 

This scale shows that the cycles of the lowest 
priced years are in a decreasing series of 
arithmetical progression, and in the order of 
11, 9, 7, and repeat. The cycles of the high- 
•est priced years are in an increasing series 
of arithmetical progression, and in the order 
of 8, 9, 10, and repeat. Also we observe that 
the price of pig-iron advances and declines 
in a decreasing series of arithmetical progres- 
sion, the advances in the order of 4, 3, and 2 
years, and repeat; the declines in the order 
of 7, 6, and 5 years, and repeat. 

Since 1834 and including 1875, the price of 
pig-iron has declined twenty-seven years, and 
advanced fourteen years, making the ratio of 
declines to the advances as two to one. The 
present cycle ending in 1877, will complete 
five cycles in low prices since 1834; the five 
cycles in high prices will be completed in 
1881. The return of the commencement of 
the different cycles in their periodical order 



PIG-IRON. 47 

is twenty-seven years, one-half the ordinary 
life-time of man. 

On page 45, the year of advances are grouped 
together, under the head of ups; and the 
years of declines under the head of downs 
for the old series, and continued in the future 
for the new series. We are now in the cj^cle 
of seven years between low priced years, and 
at the beginning of the fourth year of de- 
clines in this cycle, two more years will com- 
plete this cycle, and also the old series of the 
ups and downs. 

In the year 1878 we shall enter a new se- 
ries of ups and downs; the advances com- 
mencing with four years, and declines with 
seven years, making a cj^cle of eleven years 
in low prices. Also we are now in the cycle 
of nine years in high prices, and in 1881 the 
present high priced year cycle will be com- 
plete, and end. And after 1881 we shall enter 
the cycle of ten j'-ears in high prices, complet- 
ing this cycle in 1891. 

In the years 1878, 79, '80, and '81, the price 
of pig-iron will be on the ascending scale, the 
iron trade will again he prosperous^ and in these 
years, especially the last two, 1880 and 1881, 
money will be made very fast in this busi- 
ness, unless trammeled by unwise legislation 



48 benner's prophecies. 

upon the currency and tariff; and in the 
year 1881, in the months of September and 
October, the price Avill be at the highest. After 
these months in that year, the price will have 
a downward tendency and begin to tumble, 
and it will be fortunate for all persons who 
may be readers of this book, and may regu- 
late their business affairs according to tho 
light here shown, to close out their invest- 
ment at a good price in that year, and i> 
would be to the interest and benefit of our 
whole country if our iron men, statesmen, 
and others, would only take advantage of this 
information, which would be the means of 
placing more real money in the pockets of the 
people and coffers of the nation, than the 
wonderful alchemy at Washington, which is 
invoked by politicians to transform old rags 
into beautiful yet numberless greenbacks. 

When the iron trade is depressed, so is 
trade in every department of manufacture 
dull and unprofitable. It is to the interests 
of Trade Unions to ponder and well consider 
these predictions; as upon their certainty, 
their losses by strikes for higher wages, or to 
maintain former rates in these years of de- 
cline could be averted, by knowing the un 
changeable tendencies of the times. 



PIG-IRON. 49 

We have in the beginning predicted that 
the daily price in 1877 will run below twenty- 
dollars per ton ; and in 1881 above fifty dol- 
lars per ton. The inspiration that directs this 
prediction is found in the fact that " one ex- 
treme invariably follows another," and that 
the daily price runs below twenty dollars per 
ton in all the low priced years, and above 
fifty dollars per ton in all the high priced 
years. 

The years 1882, '83, '84, '85, '86, '87, and '88^ 
will be years of decline in the price of pig- 
iron, and years of depression in this business. 
These seven years of decline will be a repe- 
tition of the seven years from 1854 to 1861. 
We have had but one of these seven year de- 
clines since 1834, and it would be to the ben- 
efit of this country if we should never have 
another; however, the writer is compelled by 
the rule of cycles to point it out in the fu- 
ture, and warn the iron trade of this impend- 
ing danger. And we proclaim it, to all who 
may be readers of this book, and engaged in 
any way in the iron trade, to be prepared 
after the year 1881 for breakers ahead ! ! 
What we have to say on these cycles in 
prices we are positive of, and we may as well, 
right here, state that this is a positive book. 
4 



50 benner's prophecies. 

In the repetition of these seven years of de- 
cline, which these cycles surel}'' indicate, ev- 
ery furnace in this country will be slaughtered, 
unless backed by large capital and ability to 
stand great loss, or hold their iron, stop their 
furnaces, husband resources, and wait for bet- 
ter times, as pointed out in these pages. 
These declines will not encounter a general 
panic, as did the former seven year declines 
in the panic of 1857, or the present five year 
declines in the panic of 1873; and, therefore, 
they will be more gradual. 

In the years 1889, '90, and '91, the price of 
pig-iron will be on the advancing scale again, 
and will be three years reaching the highest 
price in 1891. This will be a period of money 
making in the iron business, and these will 
be three j^ears of general prosperity in all de- 
partments of trade and industry. 

After 1891 the price of pig-iron will decline 
for six years, and these declines will again be 
disastrous to this business; in fact, all busi- 
ness will be on the same retreating road to 
hard pan, as they are in this year, and will be 
in the next, as the iron and other trades and 
industries after 1891 will be under the effects 
of a commercial and financial revulsion, as 
shown hereafter under the head of " Panic." 



FIG-IRON. 51 

The writer now claims that his showing in 
the preceding pages of past prices in pig-iron, 
the cycles between high and low priced years, 
and their periodical return, has a legitimate 
bearing upon the future, that no one can 
gainsay, and no human knowledge can contra- 
dict; the predictions are based upon sound 
analogy; their fulfillment is demonstrated to 
a certainty; and that time will surely verify 
the prophecies. 

The changes of the ups and downs in 
prices and cycles in the iron trade are peri- 
odical and not hap-hazard, and succeed each 
other in a gradual and natural order. 

After the price of pig-iron has declined 
from the high price of fifty dollars per ton 
down to as low as thirty dollars per ton, the 
saying that then is the time to invest in the 
iron business, is the '' ignus fatuus " that has 
swamped the iron men of this country in not 
having a clear conception of the number of 
years in which the declines continue. 

We can not determine when the price of 
any product or commodity is at the highest 
or lowest by the knowledge of when prices 
begin to rise or fall ; we can only determine 
that by the number of years in the ups and 



52 benner's prophecies. 

downs comprising each different cycle in high 
and low prices. 

I will record here some axioms which must 
be admitted, because they are self-evident. 

That prices are high when they are above 
the cost of production on a declining market. 

That prices are low when they are below 
the cost of production on an advancing mar- 
ket. 

When the price of an article declines below 
cost, production will diminish until demand 
increases and prices advance. 

When the price of an article advances 
above cost, production will increase until de- 
mand ceases and prices decline. 

And that the cost of production is the 
wages of labor, interest on capital, and w^ear 
of land and machinery. 

When the price of pig-iron is thirty dollars 
per ton, it may be either high or low, and like 
a certain game with cards, the points depend 
upon the trumps that are out. 

If the cost of production is above on a de- 
clining market, then thirty dollars per ton is 
high ; if the cost of production is below on an 
advancing market, then thirty dollars per ton 
is low. 

The ratio of advance in price exceeds the 



PIG-IRON. 63 

ratio of increase in cost of production, and 
there is money made very fast in the iron 
business during the 2, 3, and 4 years of ad- 
vance in price. 

On the other hand, the ratio of decline in 
price exceeds the ratio of decrease in the cost 
of production, and furnaces lose money on the 
5, 6, and 7 years alternately of the decline in 
price, unless wages and expenses are curtailed 
in time. 

To apply our Cast Iron Rule, when the 
price of pig-iron has been as high as fifty dol- 
lars per ton, the price in the succeeding 
years has invariably declined to twenty dol- 
lars per ton ; and, vice versa, when the price 
has been as low as twenty dollars per ton, the 
price afterward, in a certain number of years, 
has advanced as high as fifty dollars per ton. 
The iron business is a very uncertain trade 
for persons to engage in who are not ac- 
quainted with the number of years in which 
the price advances, as they are only from two 
to four years, while the declines are from five 
to seven years. 

The enormous home production and excess- 
ive importation of foreign iron in 1871 and 
1872 produced a break in prices, and with the 
over production of 1873 and 1874, and the 



54 benner's prophecies. 

panic of 1873, the iron trade is again pros- 
trated. 

To persons not acquainted with the rules 
by which these changes occur, as regulated by 
an overruling providence, it is to them a 
wonderful illustration of the peculiarities of 
trade and the uncertainty of pri(}es, as at- 
tempted to be explained by our limited 
knowledge of supply and demand. 

In the spring of 1872 the country was pros- 
perous and advancing beyond all past his- 
tory; railroads were extending their lines 
across the continent in every direction, mark- 
ing the most gigantic railroad expansion the 
world ever beheld ; creating an unpreceden- 
ted demand for iron, giving an impetus to the 
manufacture thereof, that had no parallel in 
the history of this or any other country, run- 
ning the production to nearly three millions 
of tons in that year. All at once comes a 
snap and a crash: a reaction sets in so speedy 
and terrible, so general and decided, that we 
become amazed at the mysterious workings 
of this trade and the decrees of an all-wise 
Providence. 

The decline in the price of pig-iron since 
1872 has been over fifty per cent. 
Iron masters are crying out, ^'Give us pro- 



PIG-IRON. 55 

• 

tection or we are ruined," while the silent 
whisper to "reduce the product" is not will- 
ingly and generally heard. The Secretary of 
the Iron and Steel Association reports that 
out of 701 furnaces on the first of February, 
1874, there were 398 stacks out of blast; nev- 
ertheless there were fifty new furnaces com- 
pleted in 1873, thirty-eight in 1874, and forty- 
six stacks in the course of erection, and other 
new furnaces projected in 1875. What blind- 
ness and what folly ! ! 

The remedy at present is not to be found in 
a tariff alone on foreign importation ; a home 
competition is here in our midst more formid- 
able than all foreign competition combined. 
Seven Hundred Furnaces, some of which 
cast one hundred tons of metal per day, are ready 
to swell the home production on the first show 
of an advance in price, beyond the most ex- 
traordinary consumption, and producing stag- 
nation more disastrous than ever. 

It is a hard alternative for furnace men to 
be compelled by the ''logic of facts and 
events," to blow out their furnaces and sus- 
pend business for so long a time, but to be 
"forewarned is to be forearmed;" is it not the 
part of wisdom and policy to stop before the cap- 
ital is gone and stock unprofitably consumed ? 



56 bExMner's prophecies. 

We have not seen, in our experience or ob- 
servation, neither do the facts and records of 
modern history show, a permanent advance 
until after five years from the highest price ; 
and is the presen-t decline and cycle to be an 
exception to all others? and in the face of, 
and succeeding the greatest supplying capac- 
ity the world has ever witnessed ? and when 
other manufactures and trades, and all rail- 
roading is depressed and unprofitable, and 
when all Europe stands ready to suppl}^ any 
demand at pauper prices outside of this 
country ? 

Verily, the hand- writing is upon the wall 
and so plain it needs no magi to decipher 
what it means. 

HOGS. 

The history of the Hog Crop and its va- 
rious manufactures and products is intimately 
connected with the growth and progress of 
the Corn Crop, and the price of one now 
generally fluctuates with the price of the 
other. 

The packing of pork before the era of rail- 
roads was confined to very narrow limits, and 
there was not much value placed upon the 
hog at that period, as will be seen by the fol 



HOGS. 57 

lowing sketch written by Charles Cist, of 
Cincinnati, Ohio : 

" Hog raising has always been a profitable, 
and therefore a favorite department of farm- 
ing in what was formerly called the West, 
but which now constitutes the great center, ag 
respects population, of our rapidly expanding 
republic. The rich harvests, to be had sim- 
ply for the gathering, yielded by the oak, 
beech, hickory, and other trees of our forests, 
popularly termed mast, formed, to a great ex- 
tent, for many years, fattening food for swine. 
The roots in the woods, with the natural 
grasses, supplied subsistence during the spring 
and summer months, so that the sole expense 
to the farmer, in raising hogs, was the feeding 
of those too young for market, and of those 
reserved for stock and for increase, at the cost 
of the Indian corn necessary for their winter 
sustenance. In early days, and before the in- 
troduction of railways, this cereal would not 
repay the expense of transportation to mar- 
ket, and therefore hardly entered into the con- 
sideration of what it cost to raise hogs. In 
fact, taking into view the prolific character 
of the animal, and the small amount of labor 
and expense involved in its care and cure, it 
was the general impression in the West that it 



58 benner's prophecies. 

cost nothing for a man to make his own pork, 
and for a long time vast quantities of slaugh- 
tered hogs were sold in this region at prices 
ranging from seventy-five cents to one dollar 
per hundred weight, and considered suffi- 
ciently remunerative at these rates. The 
writer has seen in the southern portion of 
Illinois, and within twenty-five miles of land 
carriage to the Ohio, immense quanties of 
Indian corn offered at six cents per bushel ; 
yet at this low figure the grain would not 
bear transportation to the river. 

"The farmer, unless in the neighborhood of 
a distillery, was compelled to feed his crop to 
his cattle or hogs. Even at a much later 
date, between the scarcity of timber for fuel, 
and the low price of corn, large quantities of 
the latter article have furnished fuel in the 
prairie region of the State referred to. 

" As the cultivation of the country opened 
and the wood ranges became more restricted, 
it was found that it paid better, while it waa 
more convenient, to feed the hogs on corn than 
to turn them out to the woods, as they grew 
faster and increased more rapidly in fat as 
well as in flesh, while the quality both of 
meat and lard, was thereby greatly enhanced 
in value. At this period, for want of good 



HOGS. 6i^ 

roads, grain to a limited extent only was sold 
to the whisky distillers; its low price not 
permitting it to be carried by wagons to the 
distilleries unless from short distances. Under 
these circumstances pork packers commenced 
at various points in the West for the supply 
of the eastern markets, while the rapid in- 
crease of hogs kept pace with the correspond- 
ing improvement of the western country and 
the enlargement of its corn crops. 

" Then came the era of railroads. It was at 
once seen that hogs could be delivered at 
market points, either East or West, at less 
expense, in shorter time and in better condi- 
tion, than they had hitherto been taken by 
droves. There was also no giving out of the 
hogs on the route. The natural result was ta 
give a new impulse to the raising of swine ; 
and from that period the hog became one of 
the most important staples of the country." 

In examining the history of prices for hogs 
the past half century, we find that the price 
ruled very low up to the year 1830. This was 
the period when there was so little demand 
in Cincinnati for any portion of the hog other 
than hams, shoulders, sides and lard, that the 
heads, spare ribs, neck pieces, back bones, etc., 
were regularly thrown into the Ohio river to 



.60 benner's prophecies. 

s^et rid of them. Afterwards, in 1835 the pro- 
ducts of the hog became more valuable, and in 
the year 1836, in the city of New York, the 
price of mess pork advanced to thirty dollars 
per barrel, and lard to eighteen cents per 
pound. (See Finance Report of 1863.) This 
year was a very high priced year for hogs and 
their product. I have not been able to get 
the average price for fat hogs at this time, as 
there were probably none compiled ; therefore 
we are compelled to take the price of prod- 
•uct as we find it given by official authority. 
After the year 1836 the price of product 
declined each year to 1842. Mess pork was 
quoted in New York at six dollars and seventy- 
five cents per barrel. The highest quotation 
in the decade from 1840 to 1850, was in the 
year 1847, the great famine year in Ireland. 
Mess pork in New York City was sixteen 
•dollars per barrel, eleven years from the high 
prices of 1836. Mark this ! 

I have not been able to collect reliable 
yearly average prices for fat hogs prior to the 
year 1855, as there appears to be no sources 
accessible to obtain them; and as I have not 
the evidence to show any noticeable periodi- 
city or regularity existing in the return of 
low prices before that time, I therefore com- 



HOGS 



61 



mence my table of averages in the year 1855, 
which is twenty-one years ago, and forty years 
since 1836, the commencement of our cycles 
in high prices for product and hogs. 

Table of average prices for fat hogs at Cin- 
cinnati, Ohio, since 1855, and the whole num- 



ber of hog 


s packed in the West during the- 


winter seasons of 1849, '50 to 1874, 


75, in- 


elusive, as 


compiled by the Cincinnati Price 


Current. 








YEARS. 


NO. OF HOGS. 


PRICE NET. 


GROSS. 


1849 . 


. 1,652,220 . 






1850 . 


. 1,332,867 . 






1851 . 


. 1,182,846 . 






1852 . 


. 2,201,110 . 






1853 . 


. 2,534,770 . 






1854 . 


. 2,124,404 . 






1855 . 


. 2,489,502 . 


$6.05 


$4.84 


1856 . 


. 1,818,468 . 


6.23 


4.99 


1857 . 


. 2,210,778 . 


5.16 


4.13 


1858 . 


. 2,465,552 . . 


6.58 


5.27 


1859 . 


. 2,350,822 . . 


6.21 


4.97 


1860 . 


. 2,155,702 . . 


5.97 


4.78 


1861 . 


. 2,893,666 . , 


3.28 


2.63 


1862 . 


. 4,069,520 . . 


4.45 


3.56 


1863 . 


. 3,261,105 . . 


7.00 


5.60 


1864 . 


. 2,422,779 . 


14.62 


11.70 


1865 . 


. 1,785,955 . . 


11.96 


9.57 


1866 . 


. 2,490,791 . 


7.52 


6.02 


1867 . 


. 2,781,084 . 


8.25 


6.60 


1868 . 


. 2,499,873 . 


10.51 


8.41 


1869 . 


. 2,635,312 . . 


11.82 


9.46 



62 



BENNER'S PROPHECIES. 



YEAEl>. 


NO. OF HOGS. 


FBICE NET. 


GROSS. 


1870 . 


3,695,251 


. . $8.25 


$6.60 


1871 . 


4,831,558 


. 5.45 


4.36 


1872 . 


5,410,314 


. 4.90 


3.92 


1873 . 


5,466,200 


. 5.73 


4.58 


1874 . 


. 5,566,226 


. 8.74 


6.99 


Average ■ 


price at Cincinnati for 20 years is 


$7.43 net or 


$5.94 gross. 






The difference that Cincinnati pays above 


the average 


for the West 


is as follow 


s: 




1872 


1873 


1874 


Oincin'ti net. $4.90 


$5.73 


$8.74 


West 


' 4.65 


5.43 


8.33 



25 30 41 

These dates refer to the years in which the 
crop w^as made. The packing season com- 
mences in November and ends in the following 
March. It is shown in the table that the av- 
erage price for hogs was greater in 1856 than 
in 1855, but less in 1857. This depression in 
the advance was produced by the panic, how- 
ever, in 1858, the general course of price 
asserts itself with an average higher than 
either of the three years preceding it. After 
the high priced year 1858, the average starts 
out on the descending scale, declines in 1859, 
'60 and '61, making three years of declines 
with an average in lS6i of two dollars and 



HOGS. 63 

sixty three cents per hundred weight gross. 
This year was the beginning of the war, when 
farmers were almost compelled to give away 
their hogs on account of the low prices that 
pre vailed. 

It is a well known fact to the farmers and 
packers, that when the price of hogs advanced 
in 1862, '63 and '64, that all parties made 
money ; and that these years of advances cul- 
minated in 1864 with an average of eleven 
dollars and seventy cents per hundred 
weight gross, which is the highest yearly 
average price ever paid in this country for 
hogs. In the years 1865 and ^66, the average 
price declines, making only two years of de- 
cline after 1864. In 1867 the price takes the 
ascending scale, — higher in 1868, and still 
higher in 1869, with an average of nine dollars 
and forty six cents per hundred weight gross, 
making three years, of advance after 1866. 
After the year 1869 the price took the descend- 
ing scale; lower in 1870, '71 and '72, getting 
down to the average of three dollars and ninety 
cents per hundred weight gross, making three 
years of decline after 1869. In the year 1873 
the price advanced notwithstanding the great 
revulsion in trade of that year, and continued 
to advance in 1874; and the average will be 



64 benner's prophecies. 

higner in 1875 than in 1874, making three 
years of advances since 1872. 

Now let us go back in review and form our 
cycles. Commencing with 1836, a high priced 
year in product, we find the next high priced 
year in product to be the jea,Y 1847, eleven 
years from 1836. Extending this eleven years 
forward we have the high priced year 1858; 
our commencing year in high average prices 
for hogs. Extending the time eleven years 
further gives us the high priced year 1869, 
making three eleven year cycles in high 
prices. 

Again let us return to the year 1850, a low 
priced year for hogs, and add eleven to that 
year, and we have the year 1861 a low priced 
year; add eleven again, and we have 1872, a 
low priced year, making three eleven-year 
cycles in low prices. 

But we are traveling too fast, and we must 
return to 1847, a high-priced year. After this 
year the price declined three years to 1850, 
and then advanced three years to 1853, mak- 
ing a shorter cycle of six years in high prices ; 
also after 1853 the price declined two years to 
1855, and then advanced three years to 1858, 
making a cycle of five years in high prices, 
and these two shorter cycles from 1847 to 



HOGS. 65 

1858, making an eleven year cycle. After 
1858 the price declined three years to 1861, 
and then advanced three years to 1864, mak- 
ing a short cycle of six years in high prices. 
Also after 1864 the price declined two years to 
1866, atid afterwards advanced three years to 
1869, making a cycle of five years in high 
prices, and completing another long cycle of 
eleven years. Now, again, after 1869 the price 
declined three years to 1872, and then ad- 
vanced three years to 1875, making a cycle 
again of six years in high prices, and com- 
pleting one of the short cycles composing the 
present eleven year cycle, which will end 
with a short cycle of five years in the year 
1880. Returning to 1850, the next low priced 
year was ^855, making a cycle of five years in 
low prices. After 1855 the next low priced 
year was 1861, making a cycle of six years in 
low prices. Again after 1861 the next low- 
priced year was 1866, making a cycle of five 
years in low prices. After 1866 the following 
low priced year was 1872, making a cycle of 
six years in low prices. 

It will be noticed that the short cycles com- 
posing the eleven year cycles in high prices, 
Bince 1847, have been alternately six and five 
years; and the short cycles in low prices, since 
5 



66 benner's prophecies. 

1850, have been alternately five and six 
years. 

The axiom, " History repeats itself," implies 
a cyclical movement in human affairs, and as 
it is a generally received opinion that every 
thing moves in cycles, especially in nature, 
we are forced to predict, judging the future 
by the past, that in the years 1876 and '77 the 
price of hogs must decline in the average, so 
as to fill the required number of years neces- 
sary to complete the present five and eleven 
year cycles in low prices ending in 1877; also 
after two years of decline there must be three 
years of advances to the year 1880, to com- 
plete the next five and eleven year cycles in 
high prices, and therefore demonstrating to a 
certainty and to the comprehension of all, the 
fulfillment of our second series of prophecies. 

On the following page is a scale of years to 
enable the reader to see the different C3^cles 
in their order, also the ups and downs in 
prices for the past and in the future. 

This scale shows the years of lowest and 
highest prices for the hog and its producte 
since 1836, coming down in five and six year 
cycles after 1847. At the top of the scale are 
the highest priced years, 1836, 1847, 1853, 
1858, 1864, 1869, and 1875 for the past, and 



HOGS. 



67 




PAST. 



UPS. 


DOWNS. 


1856 


1859 


1857 


1860 


1858 


1861 


1862 




1863 


1865 


1864 


1866 


1867 


1870 


1868 


1871 


1869 


1872 


1873 




1874 




1875 




FUTUKE. 


1878 


1876 


1879 


1877 


1880 




1884, 


1881 


1885 


1882 


1886 


1883 


1889 




1890 


1887 


1891 


1888 



68 BENNERS PROPHECIES. 

1880, 1886, and 1891 for the future. At the 
bottom are the lowest priced years, 1850, 1855, 
1861, 1866, 1872, for the past', and 1877, 1883, 
and 1888 for the future. 

We have now passed out of the cycle of six 
years in high prices, the year 1875 closing this 
cycle. The next cycle in high prices will re- 
quire five years ending in 1880 ; at that time 
the price of hogs will be high. 

We are also in the cycle of five years in low 
prices, this cycle ending in 1877, when the 
price of hogs will be low, and farmers com- 
plaining about the prices they are compelled 
to accept for their hogs. Pig-iron will also be 
at a low price at that time, placing agricul- 
ture and manufacture at a low ebb ; prices 
low all round will make "hard times" and 
" dull trade." 

After 1877 agriculture and manufacture 
will go hand in hand, the price of hogs and 
pig-iron will be on the ascending scale, busi- 
ness in all departments will improve up to 
the year 1880 and 1881, after that time prices 
will decline and advance alternately in each 
different branch of trade, until the year 1891, 
when general business will culminate through- 
out the country, especially with iron and 



HOGS. 69 

hogs, two of the most important and leading 
branches of trade. 

It is to be observed that the price of hogs 
do not go up and down with the number of 
hogs packed. By referring to the column in 
1858, d high priced year, the packing exceeds 
any previous year with the exception of 1853. 
In 1862 the price advanced with the enormous 
packing of four millions of hogs. In 1869 the 
price advanced, while the packing exceeded 
that of 1868 ; and also the same may be said 
of 1873 and 1874 over the packing of 1872. 

The price of hogs invariably advance three 
years in succession. In the year 1859 the 
price declined, while the packing was short 
of 1858. Also in 1860 the price declined, 
while the packing was short of 1859. In 
1865 the price declined, while the packing 
was short of 1864 600,000 hogs. 

In some of the years, as the packing in- 
creased or decreased in number, so the price 
advanced or declined ; an increase of packing 
diminished the price, and vice versa. There- 
fore it is not safe to rely too much upon re- 
sults based upon the number of hogs packed. 

The price of hogs decline two and three 
years alternately in the cycles of low priced 
years. 



70 benner's prophecies. 

The aggregate number of hogs in all the 
states and territories, as estimated by the De- 
partment of Agriculture at Washington in 
1873, was 32,632,000; in 1874, was 30,860,900. 
The packing in 1873 and 1874 was about one- 
sixth of the whole number in each year. 
Chicago packs more pork than any city in the 
United States or in Europe. Total number 
packed in 1874 was 1,690,348 hogs — nearly 
one-third of the whole packing of 1874. 

As the winter packing of hogs is only about 
one-sixth of the total number produced, it is 
an important question what becomes of the 
other five-sixths, and what proportion is an- 
nually killed. I must acknowledge this to be 
a task, to undertake to make out such an ac- 
count by any system outside of the art of 
"double-entry book-keeping." Almost eyery 
farmer's family, for domestic consumption, kill 
from one to twenty or more hogs every year, 
and there has never been any statistics com- 
piled for a record of the number thus slaugh- 
tered. 

There were engaged in farming, according 
to the census of 1870, 5,922,471 persons, about 
one-sixth of the population ; if each farmer had 
killed on the average but one hog, the aggre- 
gate would exceed the total winter packing foi 



UUviS. 71 

commerce of 1874. Then we must consider 
the number of hogs that have been slaugh- 
tered by butchers in the cities and towns, the 
number that annually die with disease, and 
also the number that is reserved for stock and 
for increase. From these facts we can under- 
stand why the price is not altogether governed 
by the number of hogs packed in our large 
cities; since 1868 the number of hogs packed 
has yearly increased. 

Every farmer, feeder, drover, and packer, 
should know the years in which the price of 
hogs are to advance or decline. There are 
seldom any two years in succession in which 
the average price ranges the same. In the 
table of averages, there are two years in which 
they are the same, 1867 and 1870; however, 
they are three years apart, one on the ad- 
vance, the other on the decline. 

In the years 1858, 1864, and 1869, a great 
many persons made money on hogs, and, 
elated with good fortune, were tempted to try 
again in 1859, 1865, and 1870; and through 
ignorance of the workings of the ups and 
downs in prices, were caught with one dol- 
lar corn-fed into six dollar hogs, and they lost 
the profits and gains of the preceding years, 
and no doubt the same will be repeated by 



72 benner's prophecies. 

others in 1876; as 1875 was a profitable and 
a high priced year. We see continually some 
of our best traders " caught out in the wet," 
and to some persons it will always require a 
Columbus to show them how the egg is to 
stand upon its end. 

The price that hogs will bring each year 
can be approximated by the course of the past 
averages; however, it is governed by supply 
and demand, and state of trade in reference 
to the past commercial revulsion and the fu- 
ture coming crisis and the condition of the 
currency. Periodical revulsions do not in 
their effects change the general course of 
prices in their cycles, but they have a tempo- 
rary influence to depress prices below their 
natural and proper position, and an after in- 
fluence to keep down the averages to lower 
limits. If the people would only learn such 
years and stay out of this business, or confine 
themselves to smaller trade, when these de- 
clines in prices are to take place, especially 
after panic years, they would not complain so 
much of " hard times " and " high taxes." 

Farmers think that packers do not pay a 
Bufficient price for hogs, when prices are on 
the decline. 



HOGS. 73 

Packers think they are paying too much 
for hogs, when prices are on the advance. 

Now in both cases, farmers and j)(^c^ers are 
at a loss to know what the future development 
of prices will he. 

In the farmer's case, he receives all there is 
in the market, whether it covers cost or not, 
and the packer loses money on the further 
decline. 

In the packer's case, he pays the market 
price, and makes money on the further ad- 
vance. 

It is an established fact that the quantity 
of hogs in this country is ruled and governed 
by the current price of corn. 

In the commencement of the periodical ad- 
vance in the price of corn, and until it reaches 
the highest price, large shoats are marketed 
and butchered, the hogs that should be win- 
tered are slaughtered; small farmers and feed- 
ers sell their stock hogs in the fall and win- 
ter, to large feeders and speculators. In 
consequence of hogs being massed they get 
overlaid by large numbers bedding together 
during the cold and inclemency of the winter ; 
and without the use of the kitchen-slops, and 
by the use of soft, frosted, and rotten corn, 
peculiar to these years, they become diseased. 



74 benner's prophecies. 

and therefore more die by cholera, thumps, 
and other diseases. 

On the other hand when the price of corn 
begins its periodical decline, and until it gets 
to the lowest, farmers and small feeders keep 
their stock hogs, and by the more equal dis- 
tribution in smaller numbers, hogs live, are 
more healthy and plenty. Farmers think it 
will pay better to feed their corn to stock 
hogs, and raise more young hogs, than to sell 
their corn on a declining market ; but in this 
they are mistaken, as they are unknowingly 
producing cheap pork for the whole world, by 
an over production, the surplus of which has 
to go out of the country for consumers. 

The amount of hog products exported cor- 
responds inversely with the prices; when- 
ever we export large amounts they are at low 
prices, and wh^n prices are high our exports 
are inconsiderahle. 

To sell corn and hogs at the market price 
in the fall to others who have not studied the 
chances, the production in the years of de- 
cline is made profitable by them who know 
when to come in out of the storm. When the 
periodical advance in the price of hogs is ap- 
proaching, the butchers, drovers, and packers 
secure contracts by subtle arguments with the 



HOGS. 75 

farmers for their hogs, and as a consequence 
the farmers are not benefited to the full ex- 
tent of the advance, as they are induced to 
engage too soon, therefore they lose the op- 
portunities which belong to them. It is the 
usual expression and opinion that when a 
farmer has his hogs fat, that then is the time 
to sell ; this depends upon what cycle of sea- 
sons and prices are ruling in the markets of 
our country. If on the periodical decline^ 
after a year of short crops and high prices 
the previous year, such as 1858, '64, '69, and 
'75, then would be the time to sell. If on the 
periodical advance after a year of good crops- 
and low prices the previous year, such as 1861, 
^66, and 72, then if you have a little "specula- 
tion in your eye," it no doubt would be a good 
time, and pay you to hold for a rise. 

As buyers and sellers of products we can 
only be gainers by scarcity and high prices,, 
and that only for that article which was ob- 
tained when plenty and at low prices. 

Speculating in hogs is generally w^ith the 
majority a matter of heads and tails; when 
successful they are owlish wise, and of course 
know all about it; but when tails, then the 
"devil is in the hog." It is a most signifi* 
cant fact in these price cycles, and a confirma* 



76 benner's prophecies. 

tion of the theory that God is in prices — that 
the price of corn and hogs could advance in 
the years 1873, '74, and '75, during and im- 
mediately succeeding the great revulsion in 
trade of 1873, and when all business was be- 
coming depressed and prostrated in manufac- 
turing industry, trade unions striking to 
maintain former rates, mills and furnaces 
closing their doors, merchants complaining of 
dull times, millions of laborers and mechanicf 
idle, and no work to do. Yet we say, notwith 
standing all this, corn, hogs, and provisioEij 
have advanced in price in these years ; for the 
cj'cle of six years in high prices from 1869 to 
1875 was to be filled, and it would have been 
•contrary to the order and laws of nature to 
have been otherwise. 

CORN. 

This cereal is known as the largest of all the 
grain crops, and one of the most useful prod- 
ucts known to man. It is the chief basis for 
provisions, and a very important element in 
our breadstuff supplies. Notwithstanding the 
greater value of wheat per bushel, corn is the' 
great item in the prosperity of the West, and 
upon the good price of corn depends the wel- 
fare of the farmer. A large and over-estimated 



CORN. 77 

corn crop, that reduces the price to a nominal 
sum, makes farmers feel poor, and in turn re- 
acts upon merchants and manufacturers, and 
brings about dull trade. 

Our agricultural products and stock are the 
basis and support of all commerce, and of all 
business and trade in every department of 
human activity, and upon which all other 
industries rest. Their scarcity or abundance 
depends upon the seasons, and mostly require 
a year to bring them to perfection and ma- 
turity, while manufactured commodities can 
generally be produced in any quantity, and 
in a much shorter time. 

The commerce of the world is so dependent 
upon agricultural productions, that to ascer- 
tain their probable annual amount, has be- 
come an object of the greatest utility. A 
scarcity or abundance of crops affects the ex- 
changes of the world, and tends to forecast 
future prices, and to give some clue to future 
production. 

Estimated yield of corn in the United 
States from 1840 to 1874— the years 1862, 
'63, and '64, for Northern States only— and 
average prices from 1862 to 1874 inclusive, 
collected from agricultural and statistical re- 
ports. 



78 



BENNER'S PROPHECIES. 



TEARS'. 


PROD TJCTION. A VESA9E 
FBICES. CIS 


1840 . . 


. 377,000,000 . . 




1850 . . 


. 592,000,000 . . 




186C . . 


. 838,000,000 . . 




1862 . . 


. 533,000,000 . . 


34 


1863 . . 


. 397,000,000 . . . 


69 


1864 . . 


. 530,000,000 . • . 


99 


1865 . . 


. 704,000,000 . . , 


46 


1866 . . 


. 867,000,000 . . 


68 


1867 . . 


. 768,000,000 . . . 


69 


1868 . . 


906,000,000 . . . 


62 


1869 . . . 


774,000,000 . . . 


'75 


1870 . . 


1,094,000,000 . . 


54 


1871 . . . 


991,000,000 . . 


48 


1872 , . . 


1,092,000,000 . . . 


39 


1873 . . . 


932,000,000 . . . 


48 


1874 . . . 


854,000,000 . . . 


65 



If we could have yearly average prices of 
corn for the whole country since 1825, we 
would find that they would show the same 
regularity in ups and downs that they do after 
1862. The Finance Report of 1863 in giving 
prices for the New York markets (which are 
a long ways from the corn producing states) 
sliows that prices were very high in 1825, '26, 
in 1836, '37, in 1847 and in 1858. The statis- 
tics of the Department of Agriculture show that 
the average price was very high for 1864; in 
fact higher than ever before in this country; 
and again the price is at the top figures in 



CORN. 79 

1869, as can be seen in the table of yearly 
average prices for corn. The average price 
for 1875 will be high, and it is the next high 
priced year after 1869. These high priced 
years correspond with the price of hogs. These 
years are the highest priced years since 1830, 
making eleven year cycles up to 1858, after- 
wards in short cycles of 6 and 5 years to 1864, 
'69 and '75. The next high priced year for 
corn, which is in the future, will be the year 
1880, eleven years from 1869, and five years 
from 1875. 

We find the cycles of eleven years in low 
prices by taking the quotations in the Finance 
Report of 1863 for the New York markets, and 
commencing in 1828, a low priced year, run- 
ning to 1840, then to 1850, and to 1861; after- 
wards according to the yearly averages, as 
shown in our table to 1872, the last low priced 
year. The next low priced year coming down 
to five year cycles, will be in 1877, and the one 
following eleven years from 1872, will be 1883. 
"' The same scale of prices for hogs will answer 
for corn. When the price of hogs has been 
high the price of corn has been high, and tlie 
same when the price of hogs has been low, the 
price of corn has been correspondingly low. 
After 1858, high and low priced years run in 



80 



BENNER S PROPHECIES. 



the same order of six and five year cycles in 
the price of corn that they do for hogs. 

Now judging the future by the past, and 
looking to history to repeat itself with ap- 
proximate accuracy in detail, it is our judg- 
ment upon which we predicate this prophecy, 
that the average price of corn up to the year 
1891, will advance and decline with the aver- 
age price of hogs, as shown in the scale of 
cycles in the price of hogs ; and that the gen- 
eral advance and decline in the price of corn, 
will precede the general advance and decline 
in the price of hogs. This is inferred from 
the fact, as before stated, that the current price 
of corn governs the quantity of hogs in this 
country. 

The price of hogs, if $2.50 gross, on the 
farm, will realize to the farmer 25 cents per 
bushel for his corn. 



$3.00 


Gross, 


30 cents 


per Bushel 


4.00 




40 


u 


u a 


5.00 




60 


it 


(( ii 


6.00 




60 


u 


a <( 


7.00 




70 


il 


ii ii 


8.00 




80 


ii 


a n 


9.00 




90 


ii 


ii a 


10.00 




100 


ii 


a il 



The average prices gross for hogs compareti 



CORN. 



81 



with the average prices for corn per bushel 
since 1862, in which the fact can be noticed 
that the price of one follows the price of the 
other in the ups and downs since the year 1868 
as regularly as evening follows morning. 



HOGS, GROSS. CORN PER BUSHEL. 



1862 . . 


3.56 


1863 . . 


5.60 


1864 . . 


11.70 


1865 . . 


9.57 


1866 . . 


6.02 


1867 . . 


6.60 


1868 . . 


8.41 


1869 . , 


9.46 


1870 . 


6.60 


1871 . 


4.36 


1872 . 


3.92 


1873 . 


. 4.58 


1874 . 


. 6.99 


1875 . 






Average prices for 1875 not collected and 
published in time for this book. 

The corn crop never falls short in the grow- 
ing corn as much as one-half, but a large crop 
can be cut short by frosts, floods, damp, etc., 
in the amount secured. It is not so much in 
the failure of the crop, as in that which is 
done with it. 

The rational explanation of the partial 
6 



82 benner's prophecies. 

failure of the corn crop in any one year, may 
be found in the peculiarities of the seasons. 
The number of acres planted is no criterion 
of future production and prices. 

We were well informed in the summer of 
1874, by the Agricultural Bureau at Washing- 
ton, the commercial bulletins of the East, and 
crop reporters of the West, that there were 
two million more acres in corn that year than 
in the year 1873. Some of the eastern papers 
were clamorous that the crops of 1874 were 
simply enormous, and that prices would rule 
very low; therefore the "bears" of the East 
commenced to fix the price of corn on the 
supposition of very great abundance, while 
the merchants began to grow concerned about 
their stocks of merchandise, for fear the farm- 
ers in their poverty would not be able to take 
the usual amount. Now what was the corn 
crop and price for 1874, compared with 1873, 
taking the estimates of the Department of 
Agriculture for production and prices, as they 
are the only statistics at my command. 

1873, Production, 932,000,000 Price, 48o. 

1874. " 854,000,000 '' 65c. 



78,000,000 17c. 



CORN. 83 

A decrease of seventy-eight million of 
bushels in product, and an increase of seven- 
teen cents in price. 

This surely shows if there can be any de- 
pendence placed upon these statistics, that 
seasons make large or small crops, and that 
future prices can not be foretold by the acre- 
age planted or sown. 

The number of acres in corn and produc- 
tion in all the states and territories in the 
year 

1872 was 35,526,836 product 1,092,000,000 

1873 " 39,197,148 " 932,000,000 

3,670,312 160,000,000 

This statement shows an increase in area 
planted of three million six hundred and 
seventy thousand three hundred and twelve 
acres, while there was a decrease in product 
of one hundred and sixty million of bushels, 
with an advance in average price in 1873 
over 1872 of nine cents per bushel. 

This increase in area planted is equal to 
the whole number of acres in corn in 1873 in 
the great state of Iowa, the second state in 
the union for corn. With this very large ad- 
dition in area for corn, it is a surprising fact 



84 benner's prophecies. 

that the number of bushels produced was one 
hundred and sixty million of bushels less 
than the year before. 

Is it any wonder that some operate upon an 
overestimate, and others on an underestimate, 
when we see that the seasons have so much 
influence to make large or small crops, and 
also when our knowledge is so limited in re- 
gard to meteorological phenomena, which re- 
peat themselves in well defined and estab- 
lished periods ? 

It has been argued, and is proverbial, that it 
does not make any difference to the farmers 
whether they raise large or small crops in the 
aggregate ; what they lose in price they gain 
in quantity, and what they lose in quantity 
they gain in price. 

Now let us see if statistics of agriculture 
will carry out this assertion. Let us take the 
last cycle of six years between high prices of 
which we have the yearly average prices, for 
all the states and territories. Commencing 
with the high priced year 1869, and ending 
in 1874, the year before the next high priced 
year, giving us three years of small produc- 
tion and high prices, and three years of large 
production and low prices. 



CORN. 85 

Years in which were the smallest number of 
bushels produced and highest prices: 

1869 774,000,000 75c. 580,500,000 

1873 932,000,000 48c. 447,310,000 

1874 854,000,000 65c. 555,100,000 



2,560,000,000 1,582,960,000 

Years in which were the largest number of 
bushels produced and lowest prices: 

1870 1,094,000,000 54c. 590,760,000 

1871 991,000,000 48c. 475,680,000 

1872 1,092,000,000 39c. 425,880,000 



3,177,000,000 1,492,320,000 

In the large crop years of 1870, '71, and '72, 
there was produced six hundred and seven- 
teen millions of bushels more of corn than in 
the small crop years of 1869, '73, and '74, and 
there was realized in these small crop years, 
by the farmers, ninety million and sixty-four 
thousand dollars more money. 

This statement is as clear to the world as 
the light from a kerosene lamp, if there can be 
any approximate correctness in the estimates 
of the Department of Agriculture, that it 
does make a difference, and that all the labor 
employed and exerted, and expenses incurred 



86 benner's prophecies. 

to produce and handle this six hundred and 
seventeen millions of bushels more of corn in 
1870, '71, and '72, than in 1869, 73, and '74, 
was so much labor and money literally thrown 
away so far as the farmers' direct gains were 
concerned, while they should have raised 
twenty millions of bushels more corn to have 
realized the same money that was realized 
out of these short crop years. 

Let us make a comparison by taking the 
years in this cycle of the greatest extremes 
in production : 

1869 , . 771,000,000 75c. 58,050,000 
1872 . .1,092,000,000 39c. 42,588,000 



318,000,000 15,462,000 

There were produced in 1872 three hundred 
and eighteen millions of bushels more of corn 
than in 1869, and there were realized fifteen 
million four hundred and sixty-two thousand 
dollars less money. 

As corn was cheap in 1872, and the farmers 
fed a great portion of it to hogs, let us see 
how they came out with hogs : 

1869 . 2,635,312 hogs packed 9.46, 24,930,051 
1872 . 5,410,314 " " 3.92, 21,208,430 

2,775,002 3,721,621 



CORN. 87 

In 1872 there was sold to packers two mil 
lion seven hundred and seventy-five thousand 
and two hogs more in 1872 than in 1869, and 
the farmers realized three million seven hun- 
dred and twenty-one thousand six hundred 
and twenty-one dollars less money. 

It is evident that in the years of decline to 
lower prices, a large over-estimated yield is 
not the boon desired by the farmer, and it is 
undoubtedly to the interest of the farmer to 
use more of that energy that relaxes no efibrt; 
the perseverance that never grows weary in 
striving to produce more corn in the years of 
advances towards higher prices. 

The farmer, however, is placed in the same 
category in respect to low prices that the man- 
ufacturer is placed ; if the farmer has to take 
a low price for his grain and stock at inter- 
vals, he is compensated in being enabled to 
purchase manufactured commodities in their 
low priced years, therefore alternately each 
has its years of high and low prices thafe 
either can take advantage of. 

It is to the interest of the farmer not to be 
governed too much by present demand, and 
not to continue in the course it directs too 
long. The demand can be calculated— the 
population does not always vary with the 



88 benner's prophecies. 

seasons ; it is the supply that makes gener 
ally the fluctuations in prices. It is in the 
nature of things that the farmer should re- 
ceive the benefit of three years advance in his 
corn and hogs in every cycle of prices, and it 
would be injustice to him if he should be 
compelled to lose his labor and toil by the 
wolfish and bearish cry of enormous crops and 
low prices. 

The ups and downs in prices for corn, hogs, 
and pig-iron, and the activity and depression 
in general trade, are no doubt caused by an 
over and under production for a term of years, 
and the writer has an idea that these cycles 
in prices, which are so well defined, and re- 
peat themselves with such surprising accu- 
racy, are connected in some way with the 
cycles of nature, which are fixed because they 
are produced by regularly and permanently 
fixed causes, which are constant and uniform. 

The peculiarities of the weather and atmos- 
pheric currents, producing these extremes 
which are not conducive to large crops of 
either stock or grain, were seen in the polar 
current which came down from high lati- 
tudes on a course parallel to the Rocky Moun- 
tains in the year of 1874, producing the sever- 
est and most continued cold we have exper* 



CORN. 89 

ienced for (jleven years, since the winter of 
1863-64, and in the summer of 1875 the trop. 
ical current or trade winds being deflected by 
the Mexican elevations, entered the great 
basin of the Mississippi, and again deflected 
by the mountain spurs in Alabama, they 
swept freely over the states of Kentucky, 
Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, and Iowa; 
the great corn region of the world, laden with 
the aqueous vapors of the Gulf of Mexico, 
and coming in contact and condensed by these 
cold northern currents, occasioned in June, 
July, and August of 1875 the greatest amount 
of rain-fall and most disastrous floods since the 
years 1836, 1847, and 1858. 

In all the years prior to and including the 
high priced years in corn and hogs, we have 
had extremes in the weather. We had 
droughts in 1845, '46, and heavy rain-falls in 
1847. The heat droughts and cold winters of 
1856, '57, and '58 were very remarkable. The 
cold winters and droughts of 1863, '64, were 
unprecedented. Extremes of heat, rain, and 
droughts in 1868 and '69 were disastrous to 
the crops, and the same can be said of 1873, 
74, and '75. The years 1879 and 1880 will 
again be years of extremes in the weather, 
producing short crops and high prices. 



90 benner's prophecies. 

We have the information from high astron- 
omical authority, that in the year 1880 we are 
to have a planetary combination as to three 
of the largest planets connected with our solar 
system, such as has not occurred before for 
about 2,300 years. These planets are all to 
reach the nearest point in their orbits to the 
sun at the same time, having the effect upon 
the earth of the most violent and wonderful 
changes in her atmospheric and magnetic 
system that has ever been recorded in his- 
tory. 

COTTON. 

To give contemporary testimony to corrob- 
orate and verify our price cycles in corn and 
hogs, we w^ill take the price of cotton, which 
grows out from the ground, and is affected by 
the weather. Corn and cotton occupy all the 
territory lying between the lakes and gulf. 
The cotton crop of the Mississippi w^ould be 
affected by the floods at the North whenever 
we would have extraordinary rain -falls, or by 
unusual early or late frosts. 

The price of cotton collected from Finance 
Reports of 1857, '5S, '63, and 73, these prices 
being from the most reliable sources accessi- 
ble in the absence of any other official record: 







COTTON. 


9] 


1821 


16c 




1855 


8c. 


1822 


16 




1856 


9 


1823 


11 




1857 


12 


1824 


15 




-1 orr5> 


i ^ 


ioOo 


11 


1825 


20- 




1859 


11 


1826 


12 




1860 


m 


1827 


10 




1861 


16 


1828 


10 




1862 


41 


1829 


10 




1863 


74 


1830 


9 




1864 


1 05 11 


1831 


9 


11 


1865 


57 


1832 


9 




1866 


40 


1833 


11 




1867 


23 


1834 


12 




1868 


26 


1835 

1 oor» 


16 
1 p 




1869 

1870 


29 

20 


ioob 


lb 


1837 


14 




1871 


17 


1838 


10 




1872 


22 


1839 


14 




1873 


19 


1840 


8 




1874 




1841 


10 




1875 


11 


1842 


8 


11 


1876 




1843 


6 




1877 




1844 


8 




1878 




1845 


5 




1879 




1846 

1 Q •4'^ 


7 

i A 




1880 




lo4/ 


ID 








1848 


7 








1849 


6 






11 


1850 


11 






1851 


12 








1852 


8 


11 






1853 


9 








1854 


9 




1891 





92 benner's prophecies. 

These prices are for New York, which are 
sometimes ruled by speculators, and allowance 
must be made for their incorrectness. 

The price of cotton is more influenced by 
the state of trade in the world than the price 
of corn and hogs, and therefore it does not fol- 
low the production in this country so close as 
the former products. Commencing in 1825, 
we find the price of cotton to be twenty cents 
per pound, the highest quotation in the scale 
— except during the war of rebellion; the next 
highest quotation is in 1836, eleven years 
from 1825. In looking ahead in the table, we 
find 1847 a high priced year in respect to 
other years preceding and immediately after 
that year. Again in 1858, we find a high 
price with the year before and the year after, 
all high priced years. Again, in 1869 we have 
the next high price after the war, the war 
•€oming in on a short cycle of six years. Now 
■extending our price cycle of eleven years from 
1869, it gives us the year 1880, our next high 
priced year for cotton, and running eleven 
years further, we have the year 1891, when 
cotton, corn, hogs, pig-iron, will be at a high 
price, and general business prosperous — up to 
that year. 



PEO VISIONS. 



PROVISIONS. 



The year of the provision trade begins the 
6rst of November and ends on the last day 
of October. 

The statistics are mostly made up com- 
mencing with November. However, with 
these statistics, as generally compiled, the 
writer in his observation does not lay much 
store by them. 

How many hogs are annually killed is one 
of the mooted and unsolved problems of the 
day. The statistics of winter and summer 
packing of hogs are no doubt reliable, or as 
near correct as can be compiled, but the do- 
mestic killing by farmers and butchers is 
not collated for the public, which is a very 
important item to be considered in our pro- 
vision statistics. Therefore we are forced to 
take for granted that a part is not sufficient 
without the whole. 

It is almost an impossibility to procure full 
and reliable statistics of the exact amount of 
hog products in this country; and also what 
becomes of all the pork, bacon, lard, etc., that 
are prepared in this country to be consumed 
at home, or sold to commerce. And again, 
what the probable commercial- demand will 



94 benner's prophecies. 

be for hog products within the provision year. 
As there are so many elements entering into 
the probable supply and prospective demand, 
that we can not form a correct opinion in ref- 
erence to the advance or decline in prices 
other than by keeping in view the advance 
and decline in the general course of prices 
for hogs from year to year. 

The price of the hog products have hereto- 
fore followed closely to the price of hogs. 
Taking the last cycle in high prices for hogs, 
we find that after the high priced year 1869, 
the price of provisions declined in 1870, '71, 
and '72, reaching the lowest limit in the sum- 
mer of 1872. In the year 1873, when the 
price of hogs advanced, provisions also ad- 
vanced. Speculators are generally alive to 
these facts, and on these periodical advances 
they are ready and willing to operate, and in- 
vest as described in the following. 

Chicago was well convinced in 1873, while 
hogs were advancing in price, that " then was 
the time in the price which, if taken at the 
advance, leads on to fortune," and her opera- 
tors went in on a bull speculation, and not 
only bought up all the stock offered at current 
rates, and contracted for all prospective sup- 
plies for Chicago, but went to New York and 



PROVISIONS. 95 

bought up all stock offered, and all options, 
also went into European markets, and bought 
back their own stuff that had been shipped 
early and at low prices, and when the combi- 
nation had secured the control of the mar- 
kets, up wont the price to extraordinary figures 
for the first year of advances in hogs and pro- 
visions after the former declines. Chicago 
was happy, and her speculators pocketed 
millions of money. 

This Western bull campaign in provisions, 
with its lofty Texian horns tossing the mar- 
kets to such dizzy heights as it did in 1873. 
could not have been successful, with all its 
financial strength, in any of the years of de- 
cline in the price of hogs. 

The speculators who may attempt in 1876 
or 1877 to bull the provision markets, can no 
more thrive and prosper than can swamp 
fever live on the lofty peaks of Chimborazo. 
And if this speculation be undertaken in 
these years, these Western operators will real- 
ize that they are mistaken, and will be 
slaughtered in this business as surely as were 
the deluded Hindo pilgrims mistaken in the 
means of salvation, and uselessly slaughtered 
when casting themselves between the wheels 
of the car of Juggernaut. 



96 benner's prophecies. 

PANIC. 

Panics in the commercial and financial 
world have been compared to comets in the 
astronomical world. It has been said of com- 
ets that they have no regularity of move- 
ment, no cycles, and that their movements 
are beyond the domain of astronomical 
science to find out. 

It has been admitted by astronomers that 
the comet of 1874, named Coggia, was a new 
comet and a stranger ; one that has not vis- 
ited this part of the universe before within 
the history of mankind. However that may 
be, the writer claims that Commercial Revul- 
sions in this country, which are attended with 
financial panics, can be predicted with much 
certainty ; and the prediction in this book, of 
a commercial revulsion and financial crisis 
in 1891 is based upon the inevitable cj^cle 
which is ever true to the laws of trade, as 
affected and ruled by the operations of the 
laws of natural causes. 

The panic of 1873 was a commercial revul- 
sion ; our paper money was not based upon 
specie, and the banks only suspended cur- 
rency payments for a time in this crisis. 

As it is not in the nature of things in each 



PANIC. 97 

succeeding cycle to operate in the same time 
and manner, the writer claims that the '* signs 
of the times" indicate that the coming pre- 
dicted disturbance in the business world will 
be not only an agricultural, manufactur- 
ing, mining, trading, and industrial revul- 
sion, but also 2l financial catastrophe^ producing 
a universal suspension of specie payments, 
and the closing up of all the banks in this 
country. 

It is not necessary to give a detailed ac- 
count of the effects of disorderly banking in 
our colonial and revolutionary history, and 
the different panics prior to the war of 1812, 
to establish cycles in commerce and finance. 

Such a history would fill many pages with- 
out answering the purpose of this book, and 
would be as intricate and difficult to under- 
stand as the prices of stocks and gold in Wall 
Street, as the eternal fitness of things at that 
time were on trial, and necessarily unsettled, 
so far as man could understand. 

The war of 1812 was the period in the his- 
tory of the United States of America when 
it was deemed a necessity for this country to 
become a manufacturing nation, as a balance 
wheel to maintain the prosperity of agricul- 
ture and commerce, and also to declare her in- 
7 



98 benner's prophecies. 

dependence forever from any nation upon the 
earth. 

It is a doleful commentary upon the times 
that such calamities in the history of our 
country, as hereafter mentioned, should have 
occurred amidst a profusion of all the ele- 
ments of wealth, prosperity in trades and 
manufactures, and independence in the arts 
and sciences. 

It will only he necessary for the purposes 
of this book to state that the business of this 
country before, during, and after the war of 
1812 had culminated in the year 1819, as 
commercial history will show; and that a re- 
action in business followed this year, the be- 
ginning year in our cycles of commerce and 
panic. 

However, we deem it important to notice 
at this period the operations of banking in 
brief as a good criterion of the prosperity and 
adversity in general business, and the fluctu- 
ations in the activity of industry and com- 
merce. 

In the Report of Finances for 1854, ^55, it is 
stated that from the adoption of the Federal 
Constitution in 1787 to the year 1798, no peo- 
ple enjoyed more happiness or prosperity than 
the people of the United States, nor did any 



PA nc. 



99 



country ever flourish more within that space 
of time. During all this time, and up to the 
year 1800, coin constituted the bulk of the 
circulation; after this year the banks came, 
and all things became changed ; like the upas 
tree, they have withered and impaired the 
healthful condition of the country, destroyed 
the credit and confidence which men had in 
one another, and inflicted on the people polit- 
ical and pecuniary diseases of the most deadly 
character. 

The bank-note circulation began to exceed 
the total specie in the country in the years 
1815, '16, and '17, and in the year 1818, the 
bank mania had reached its height; more 
than two hundred new banks were projected 
in various parts of the Union. The united 
issues of the United States Bank, and of the 
local banks, drove specie from the country in 
large quantities, and in the year 1819, when 
the culmination in general business had been 
reached, and contraction of the currency be- 
gan to be felt, multitudes of banks and indi- 
viduals were broken. The panic producing a 
disastrous revulsion in trade, caused the fail- 
ure of nine-tenths of all the merchants in 
this country and others engaged in business, 
and spread ruin far and wide over the land 



100 benner's prophecies. 

Two-thirds of the real estate passed from the 
hands of the owners to their creditors. Vol- 
umes would be required to portray the horrors 
and sufferings produced by this general com- 
mercial and financial revulsion in business 
and trade. 

A banker, in a letter to the Secretary of 
State, in 1830, describes the times as follows: 
^' The disasters of 1819 which seriously affected 
the circumstances, property, and industry 
of every district of the United States w411 be 
long recollected. 

" A sudden and pressing scarcity of money 
prevailed in the spring of 1822; numerous and 
very extensive failures took place in 1825 ; 
there was great revulsion among the banks 
and other monied institutions in 1826. The 
scarcity of money among the trades in 1827 
was disastrous and alarming; 1828 was char- 
acterized by failures among the manufactures 
and trades in all branches of business. La- 
mentable and rapid succession of evil, and 
untoward events prejudicial to the progress of 
productive industry, and causing a baneful 
extension of embarrassment, insolvency, liti- 
gation, and dishonesty, alike subversive of 
social happiness and morals. 

" Every intelligent mind must express regret 



PANIC. 101 

and astonishment at the occurrence of these 
disasters in tranquil times and bountiful sea- 
sons, amongst enlightened, enterprising, and 
industrious people, comparatively free from 
taxation, unrestrained in pursuits, possessing 
a,bundance of fertile lands and valuable min- 
erals, with capital and capacity to improve, 
and an ardent disposition to avail themselves 
of the advantages of these great bounties." 

After the year 1828 business continued to 
be depressed, vibrating according to circum- 
etances until 1834, a year of extreme dullness 
in all branches of trade ; after which our stock 
of precious metals increased very fast, busi- 
ness revived, and in the year 1835 and '36^ 
the imports of gold and silver increased to an 
enormous extent ; as the banks increased their 
reserves of specie, they also correspondingly 
issued bank notes — each increased issue of 
paper money led to the establishment of new 
banks. 

The State banks that had numbered in 
1830 only three hundred and twenty-nine, with 
a capital of one hundred and ten millions, 
increased, according to the treasury report, by 
the first of January, 1837, to six hundred and 
twenty-four, or, including branches, to seven 



102 benner's prophecies. 

hundred and eighty-eight, with a capital paid 
in of t^yo hundred and ninety millions. 

Mark the result! and culmination!! a 
panic!?! in the month of May, 1837, and 
suspenpion of specie payments by all the 
banhsj and a general commercial revulsion 
throughout the country, involving the fortunes 
of mertihants, manufacturers, and all classes 
enc^-ged in trade, in consequence of a ruinous 
fall in prices. This year of reaction makes 
the seond year in our panic cycles, and is 
eighteen years from 1819. 

It is not necessary to go over almost the 
same 1 istory again to show that business 
was depressed, and trade was. stagnant after 
1837 do'vn to the year 1843, and then up and 
down to the year 1850, a year of extreme 
dullness in all branches of trade and industry, 
after which year a change came, and business 
was again prosperous to the year 1857, when 
we again experienced a commercial and finan- 
cial crisis and reaction, not only in this country 
but all over the world, making the third year 
in our cycles, and twenty years from 1837. 

History repeats itself with marvelous accu- 
racy in detail from one panic year to another. 
The general direction of business after the 
panic of 1857 was on the same downward 



PANIC. 103 

grade that had characterized the times after 
the panics of 1819 and 1837, until all business 
had culminated in depression in the yeai 
1861, after which trade again improved, and 
was very active during the war of rebellion and 
up to the year 1865, when a temporar}? reac- 
tion set in ; and, reader, let me observe here, 
that if then had been the time for a commer- 
cial revulsion and panic in money, the catas- 
trophe would have been the most deplorable 
national calamity upon record. However, the 
cycle was not then complete, and the com- 
merce and trade of the country continued to 
be semi-prosperous until 1870, after which 
year commercial activity was the order of the 
day, all branches of business and manufacture 
flourished and was prosperous; our railroad 
building was astonishing in the world in the 
years 1871, '72 ; but the end must come, and in 
September, 1873, we had the culmination — a 
crushing panic, and reaction in all trades, 
manufactures, railroads, and industries, which 
is still going on, and we have not yet reached 
hard pan. 

These are facts of late history, and are so 
fresh in the recollection of the mind of the 
reader, that it is only necessary to refer to 
them. The panic of 1873 makes the fourth 



104 benner's prophecies. 

year in our panic cycles, and sixteen years 
from 1857. 

As to whether it is the paper money or the 
manufacturing and trading industries of the 
country, which call out and into use the pa- 
per money that produce these periodical in- 
flations and contractions, by which trade is 
stimulated and deranged, and extremes in 
business activity is brought about, is a mat- 
ter for the statesman and historian to ascer- 
tain and record; it is only sufficient for our 
present purpose to point out the panic years, 
and to show that the preceding years were 
prosperous and profitable years in trade; 
while the succeeding years, for a certain 
length of time, were years of depression and 
loss in business; and we observe that since 
the business of the country has abandoned 
specie as a currency, and adopted paper 
money in lieu thereof, the manufacturing 
interests have attained larger proportions, 
and that there are more regularity and system 
in the return of the advance and decline in 
general business, and that the culminating 
years in activity and depression can be calcu- 
lated and ascertained with greater certainty. 

The CYCLES in panics with the cycles of 
PIG-IRON in the same scale. 



PANIC. 



105 




106 benner's prophecies. 

The panics of 1819, '37, '57, and '73, during 
this period of years, stand out upon the pages 
of the history of this country in their magni- 
tude compared with other panics, as the planet 
Jupiter compares with the lesser planets in 
our solar system. 

Commencing with the commercial revulsion 
of 1819, we find it was eighteen j^ears to the 
crisis of 1837; twenty years to the crisis of 
1857; and sixteen years to the crisis of 1873 — • 
making the order of cycles sixteen, eighteen, 
and twenty years and repeat. The cycle of 
twenty years was completed in 1857, and the 
cycle of sixteen years ending in 1873, was the 
commencement of the repetition of the same 
order. It takes panics fifty-four years in their 
order to make a revolution, or to return in the 
same order ; the present cycle consisting of 
eighteen years will end in 1891, when the next 
panic will burst upon us with all its train of 
woes. 

Returning to the bottom of the scale, there 
we find the years of poor trade and hard 
times; between panic yeais in the scale there 
are two low points, indicating two different 
times of depression in the iron business ; these 
low points indicate the hard pan years in gen- 
eral business. Confidence after these years, 



PANIC. lOT 

especially after the latter, exercises its empire 
and casts overboard the incubus that ha& 
weighed down enterprise and energy; these 
years are the ending of the declines, the begin- 
ning of better prices and more prosperous 
times. The year 1877 is the next low point 
in our scale for price of pig-iron. This year 
will be a dull and unprofitable year for the 
iron trade, and also for general business. 

The next high point will be 1881, a prosper- 
ous year for the iron business. However, in 
the year 1882, and the six succeeding years= 
running to 1888, like the years after 1854 and 
1864, we may look for squalls in the money 
market, blue-Mondays, black-Fridays, and tor- 
nadoes in banking, and the first financial flury 
under the coming specie basis, which will 
have to rest upon a confidence artificially 
created and artificially supported, unless the 
currency is contracted to that minimum which 
would prostrate the industries of the country,, 
paralyze the life and energy of our people, and 
produce convulsions and depressions only 
equaled in the years succeeding 1819, '37, and 
'57, filling up the pages of history with com- 
mercial and financial disasters, as they were 
filled up to 1834 and 1850. After the year 
1888 the price of pig-iron will advance, all 



i08 benner's prophecies. 

business will be prosperous, corn and hogs 
will be on the advance, agriculture and manu- 
facture will be active, all trades and industries 
will make money up to the year 1891, when 
we predict a panic which will not be confined 
to the United States, or this continent, but 
will sweep over the world like the panics of 
1819 and 1857, and will be felt with equal 
severity in other countries. 

Since 1819, panics burst upon us after the 
price of pig-iron had commenced to decline, 
and therefore it is not chargeable to a general 
panic as the direct cause of the price of iron 
taking the descending scale; the price declines 
without a general panic, (see scale after 1845, 
imd '64,) and the same will be the case in 1881. 
In 1891, the commencement of the decline in 
the price of pig-iron will precede the panic of 
Scptembsr or October of that year. 

The writer claims that the iron trade is the 
chief and ruling industry in this country, if 
not in the world. Iron is the most useful ci 
all metals, in fact the bone and sinew of our 
civilization, and the most important element 
of progress, as seen in the sewing machine^ 
reaper and mower, spinning-jenny, power 
loom, steamboat, railroad, laud and submarine 
telegraph. And as the iron industry raises oi 



PANIC. 109 

falls in the scale of prosperity, so does the 
general business of the country. Pig-iron ia 
our north star to guide us over the dangerous 
roads of commerce. It is the barometer of 
trade, and as the sudden falling of the mer- 
cury denotes violent changes in the atmos- 
pherical world, so does the periodical decline 
in the price of pig-iron indicate panic, depres- 
sion, and general stagnation in business. 

The United States of America will in the 
future surpass all the world besides, in the 
production of pig-iron and in the manufacture 
of its products; and if this trade could be es- 
tablished upon a firm basis, and the labor 
employed in dull times until it has accumu- 
lated capital, with the ingenuity, invention, 
and skill of the indomitable Yankee in the 
complex processes of its manufacture, with 
our abundance of cheap raw material, and by 
the aid of natural gas for fuel as lately and 
Buccessfully applied at Pittsburg, a thorough 
knowledge of the ups and downs of prices in 
the markets and cycles of good and bad trade, 
this industry in this country in its colossal 
proportions, would in a short time, defy the 
world's competition, give us better and 
f,heaper iron; give more steadiness to prices. 



110 benner's prophecies. 

and greatly mitigate the consequences of peri- 
odical crises and depressions. 

The highest and lowest prices in the cj^cles 
of high and low priced years for iron are in a 
progressive order, as reported in the monthl^^ 
price tables of the Iron and Steel Association. 
'The high prices commencing in January, 1837, 
going over to May in 1845, to June in 1854, to 
August in 1864, and to September in 1872. 
The low prices, commencing in April, 1834, 
reaching to July in 1843, to July in 1850, to 
'October in 1861, and December in 1870; show- 
ing that each cycle extends a fraction over the 
required years. The low prices for 1877 will 
run into January of 1878. 

The panic of 1819 began early in the year, 
^nd that of 1837 in May, and of 1857 in Sep- 
tember, and of 1873 in September. The price 
of pig-iron in 1881 will not reach the maxi- 
mum until September; after that month it 
"will begin to decline. The price of pig-iron 
in 1891 will not begin to decline before Sep- 
tember, as the panic will not appear before 
that month in that year. 

Astronomy tells us that eclipses return in 
the same order every eighteen years. Every 
eclipse within this period of eighteen years 
belongs to a separate series of eclipses; that is, 



PANIC. in 

thore is but one eclipse during the eighteen 
years which belong to the same series. This 
periodical return was discovered by the an- 
cients, and by this rule they were able to fore- 
tell the appearance of many of the eclipses 
years in advance; and by close observation 
through many centuries, astronomers at this 
day can foretell the exact hour and minute of 
the appearance of any or all the eclipses. 
Other cycles of motion in the heavens vary in 
their particular order of series. Science will 
yet show that there is a reality in the connec- 
tion between human events and the operations 
of nature; the causes and the laws b}^ which 
they operate we are now ignorant of. 

The cycles in panics and ups and downs in 
prices of agricultural and manufactured arti- 
cles are but the effects of a cause, which is 
manifested in periods of sixteen, eighteen and 
twenty years in panics; that return in the same 
order every fifty-four years, in periods of eight, 
nine, and ten years in the price of pig-iron; 
which return in the same order every twenty- 
seven years, and down to five and six j^ears in 
the price of corn and hogs; which return in 
the same order every eleven years; and by a 
series of observation in the future, the particu- 
lar month and day could be ascertained when 



112 benner's prophecies. 

these changes in the ups and downs in prices 
will occur. When once these cycles are de- 
fined, ascertained, and calculated upon to a 
month and day, by a careful compilation of 
prices in each cycle, and the natural causes 
producing them discovered and verified, then 
their return can be calculated to continue in 
that exact order as long as other cycles in mo- 
tion ; as they are the effects of other motions, 
and will return with as much certainty and 
astronomical exactness, as the return of the 
eclipses of the sun and moon ; and it does not re- 
quire a belief in the fabulous to have faith in 
their periodical appearance. These c^^cles in the 
operations of cause and effect have always ex- 
isted. There has been no confusion. Man has 
been continually making discoveries of the 
manner in which the laws of nature operate. 

In my predictions I stated that 1876 and '77, 
would be years of great depression in general 
business, and that there would be many fail- 
ures in these years ; they will come at the end 
of the five years' decline in the price of pig- 
iron ; and it does not require a gift of prophecy 
to foretell many failures in all of these years. 

The " signs of the times " can be calculated 
b}'' comparing 1876 and 1877 with other years 
after commercial panics, and the fall in the 



PANIC. 113 

price of pig-iron — for instance, 1842, '43, and 
1860, '61 — and the state of business preceding 
these years, remembering that 1876 is presi- 
dential year, and that presidential 3^ears like 
1820, 1840, and 1860, immediately succeeding 
commercial revulsions, are years of depression 
in business, the uncertainty of the times and 
of future legislation clogs the wheels of 
commerce and stops business. " Hard times " 
and '' dull trade " are surely upon us for the 
next two years. The working man who de- 
pends upon his labor for his living, espec- 
ially they who are engaged in the iron trade, 
surely have a dreary prospect — compelled by 
low wages to practice the most rigid economy 
in the necessaries of life, in the use of bad 
flour, black molasses, pressed shoulders, and 
store pay. And in the depression of the agri- 
cultural, manufacturing, and industrial inter- 
ests, as they will be depressed all over the 
land in the next two years, the sting of hard 
times will come to every man's home. 

In all these years of reaction and depression 
in general business, Providence works upon 
the minds of men, as witnessed at the present 
time by the religious excitement in the East, 
created by the evangelists Moody and Sankey, 
as instruments in the hands of God to start in 



114 benner's prophecies. 

motion a religious wave that will in the next 
two years sweep over the entire western 
country. — Men in time of trouble put more 
trust in God, and are inclined to more thought- 
fulness. 

The writer stated in his predictions that 
notwithstanding the resumption of specie 
payments, the price of iron and hogs will be 
higher in 1879 than in 1878. The price of 
iron and hogs will have already suffered a 
diminution in premium and price in their 
low priced year 1877. It is natural for prices 
to advance in 1878, 1879, and 1880, and no 
legislative act can prevent it. The return to 
specie payments will give confidence in busi- 
ness and stability to trade. 

Congress made a mistake in not fixing 
January 1, 1878, as the time for the resump- 
tion of specie payments; this delay will cause 
the government and people to lose twelve 
months of recuperative strength in the great 
commercial and financial battle of 1891. 

January 1, 1878, is the time when all need- 
ful and necessary contraction of the currency 
for a specie basis will be in conformity with 
the universal contraction of business, which 
will have been going on ever since the re- 
vulsion of 1873, and when general depression 



PANIC. 115 

will have reached the very hottom of hard 
pan, and when the times will demand that 
contraction in trade and currency must cease, 
and the ending of the cycle in low prices for 
pig-iron, the great jupiter of trade. 

The combined interests of the people will 
demand that this incubus and scare-crow upon 
industry and trade be confined to the shortest 
period consistent with the times, and that 
there be no contraction after the year 1877. 
Agriculture, manufacture, mining, commerce, 
finance, and the cycles of high heaven demand 
it ; to restore business confidence ; to relieve 
general distress, and to repair national and 
individual disaster. 

Commercial panic is the reaction from over 
trading and over expansion of credit and con- 
fidence, an excess of commerce and finance. 
Political economy abounds in theories to ex- 
plain the cause of panics. It is not necessary 
to look about for a cause; commercial and 
financial revulsions are the consequences of 
many causes. 

When the price of iron begins to decline 
there is a panic in- iron. When the price of 
hogs commence to decline there is a panic in 
hogs. When the price of cotton, wool, wheat, 
or any product begins to fall, there is a panic 



N 



116 benner's prophecies. 

in that particular article; the supply exceeda 
the demand. Prosperity in the aggregate 
creates general confidence, and expands credit, 
and this swells the prosperity, increases the 
demand for money, inducing hanks to extend 
their issues and loans to the utmost, until the 
climax is reached; then comes the panic, the 
inevitable crisis and reaction ; the pressure 
to realize produces a decline in prices; confi- 
dence is lost, capital, ever sensitive, with- 
draws ; a run commences on the banks, ending 
in financial and commercial disaster. 

Commercial revulsions are governed by a 
law beyond the control of man, and are con- 
fined to no creed, party, or politics. 

The panic of 1819 was in Monroe's admin- 
istration ; that of 1837 in Martin Van Buren's; 
of 1857 in James Buchanan's ; and of 1873 in 
U. S. Grant's. 

No governmental or congressional subsidies; 
no legisla.tive enactments, tarifis, or currencies; 
no financial syndicates, convertible or inter- 
changeable bonds ; no bribery of legislators or 
betrayal of constituents can arrest or change 
their course. 

When the period arrives for a panic, any 
breeze or signal, no matter what reverses the 
engine, the times take the downward grade, 



PANIC. in 

and there is no general recovery until we 
hear pig-iron demanding 

"Watchman! what of the Night?" 

This ideal will have been standing out 
apon the dome of the weather-beaten tower of 
time, gazing into the dim vista of the future, 
for five long years of disaster and ruin, wait- 
ing for the period foreseen and predicted, 
when the glimmer of the year 1878 can be 
discerned in the eastern horizon, not a mete- 
oric flash Avhich illumes the night with a 
transient and uncertain glow; but the con- 
tinued morning radiance, which is the fore- 
runner of the full light and glory of a bright 
noon-day — will then exclaim AROUSE, PIG- 
IRON ! monarch of business ! come forth from 
the chambers of thy slumbering silence, the 
•dawn of a new era is at hand ! hogs, corn, and 
cotton fall into line, and start in motion the 
wheels of commerce, industry, and trade ! 

The resumption of trade and industry in 
the year 1878 must go on ; the Gibraltar of 
hard times will be passed in 1877 ; the mills 
and furnaces will start up; the price of pig- 
iron, hogs, corn, and provisions will be on 
the advance. Agriculture, manufacture, min- 
ing, commerce, and finance, will begin to 



118 benner's prophecies. 

prosper ; the industries of all this country will 
be born of new life, and with our finances 
upon a sound basis, and a stop put to the 
enormous importation of foreign goods, that 
we can manufacture ourselves, which will 
give us the balance of trade, and enable us to 
keep our gold at home, and a general knowl- 
edge among the people of the duration of the 
ups and downs in prices, and when we may 
expect the return of commercial panics — this 
country with its forty millions of population, 
seventy thousand miles of railway, and two 
hundred millions of acres of cultivated land, 
will prosper and advance beyond any nation 
which has appeared in all ages of the world, 
and the chronicles of its future history, if 
well written, will rival the stories of oriental 
imagination. 

THEORY. 

We have had to hunt down Price Cycles 
by establishing periodicity in high and low 
priced years ; the length of the difierent 
periods in which they have repeated them- 
selves, and by indisputable dates, facts, and 
figures, demonstrating their regularity. 

The cause producing the periodicity and 
length of these cycles may be found in oui 



THEORY. 119 

Bolar s.ystem. The writer does not claim a 
knowledge of the causes and conditions under 
which they occur, and the reasons why they 
occur; meteorological scientists have been labor- 
ing and exploring the records of all ages to 
discover a Meteorological Cycle — the great desid- 
eratum of the age. 

In the Elements of Meteorology, by Prof. 
John H. Tice, of St. Louis, Mo., published in 
1875, are meteorological cycles, demonstrated 
and verified according to his theory, which is 
that Planetary Equinoxes are the causes of the 
disturbance to which our earth and atmos- 
phere is periodically subject. 

That all the elements of disturbance are 
physically interwoven with and inseparable 
from the planetary system, and that Jupiter 
at his equinoctial points suffers physical per- 
turbations both in his body and atmosphere, 
probably more intense than the disturbances 
at our equinoxes. These cause similar atmos- 
pherical and physical paroxysms in Jupiter, 
as our equinoctial disturbances do; namely, 
electric and magnetic storms and earthquakes 
in the body of the planet ; and in the atmos- 
phere, violent tornadoes and hurricanes, ac- 
companied with terrible electric explcisionSj 
heavy rain-falls and hail storms, and that 



120 benner's prophecies. 

these equinoctial disturbances in Jupitei 
affect the sun, and through the sun the solar 
system. The result upon the earth and its 
atmosphere is an enormous increase of elec- 
tric intensity. Gives the equinoxes of Vul- 
can, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, 
and Saturn, and also a historical record of 
auroras, sun-spots, earthquakes, magnetic dis- 
turbances, cyclones, rain-falls, and hail storms, 
in verification of his cycle, and demonstrates '^ 
that Jupiter is the cause of the atmospheric, 
telluric, and solar perturbations that occur 
once and in a modified form twice in every 
one of his orbital revolutions, and that the 
maximum disturbance upon the earth must 
occur at or near Jupiter's equinox, and that 
the energy of the equinox of any planet is 
intensified when that of another occurs at or 
about the game time. Fixes 11,86 years as 
the length of the Jupiter year, and names it 
the Jovial Cycle, and assumes that on the 
following years in this century have occurred, 
and will occur, the Jovial Major Equinox : 



1800.58 


1859.88 


1812.44 


1871.74 


1824.30 


1883.60 


1836.16 


1895.46 


1848.02 





THEORY. 12t 

The cycles of 11 years in the price of corn 
and hogs, 27 years in the price of pig-iron, 
and 54 years in general business, can not be 
accounted for upon any known theory in the 
operations of trade. Therefore we must look 
elsewhere for a cause and solution of the 
problem. 

The fact of the existence of these cycles is 
patent to any close observer, and as to 
whether any hypothesis or theory would be 
of practical utility when not a demonstrated 
and verified truth, is for the reader to deter- 
mine. 

In our 11 year cycles commencing in 1836, 
and running to 1847, '58, and '69, we observe 
that our cycles fall behind the Jovial Cycle. 
We have not the daily or monthly prices for 
corn and hogs, so as to ascertain if there are 
fractions of a year in our cycles; if there 
should be, they would be found to be small. 
We know there are fractions in the cycles for 
pig-iron extending over four months from 
1837 to 1845, and in other cj^cles from one to 
two months, but not sufficient fractions in 
any cycle within the past forty years, and 
will not' be before 1891, to change the number 
of years in any high priced year cycle of 
either hogs or pig-iron. 



122 benner's prophecies. 

The meteorological cycle, as verified by 
Prof. Tice, seems to be well demonstrated bv 
his array of historical facts. 

His forecasts of the weather during the 
year 1875 was verified with surprising accur- 
acy, and we have no doubt that his theory in 
regard to sun-spots, earthquakes, auroras, and 
magnetic disturbances is well confirmed. 
However, it is to be considered that other ele- 
ments and influences may operate to cause 
abundance or scarcity in stock and grain 
crops. 

Facts are the data of all just reasoning, and 
the primary elements of all real knowledge. 
The fact seems to be philosophically certain 
that all the planets which compose our solar 
system are essential to that system : the sun 
to the planets, the planets to the sun, and all 
to each other ; and when certain combina- 
tions are ascertained which produce one legi- 
timate invariable manifestation from an an- 
alysis of the operations of the combined solar 
system, then we may be enabled to discover 
the cause producing our price cycles, and the 
length of their duration. 

It is evident from our showing of *the ups 
and downs in prices, and the high and low 
priced years, that these cycles repeat them- 



THEORY. 123' 

Belves in definite length; and without deter- 
mining a fixed and exciting cause for their 
existence, or attempting to verify theories of 
which we are distrustful, we will risk our 
reputation as a prophet, and our chances for 
success in business upon our 11 year cj^cle ia 
corn and hogs; in our 27 year cycle in pig- 
iron, and in our 54 year cycle in general^ 
trade, upon which we have operated with suc- 
cess in the past. 

Modern facilities have brought the ends of 
the earth together, and nearly obliterated the 
cycles in famine and bread riots, but in turn 
have developed well defined cycles in prices. 
By the aid of steam and electricity, a de- 
ficiency in one part of the earth is soon sup- 
plied by the surplus of another ; therefore, 
natural productions are more equalized over 
the country ; and as the average aggregate 
yearly amount is regulated by productive and 
unproductive seasons, prices follow nature 
more closely than formerly, and their cycles 
must correspond very closely with meteoro- 
logical cycles. 

The influence of the sun-spot period upon 
production and prices, has formed the subject 
of numerous discussions during the present 
century; and it is a singular fact that scien* 



124 benner's prophecies. 

tists have made the discovery that large and 
small crops have occurred at intervals approx- 
imating to eleven years, the average length of 
the sun-spot period. It may be a meteorologi« 
cal fact that Jupiter is the ruling element in 
our price cycles of natural productions ; while 
also it may be suggested that Saturn exerts an 
influence regulating the cycles in manufac- 
ture and trade. 

Herschel and Leverrier, away out in the 
regions of immensity, beyond the range of 
human eyesight, may send forth an electric 
influence aflecting Jupiter, Saturn, and, in 
turn, the Earth. Heathen mythology claimed 
that Saturn was the deity who presided over 
time, as he was the most distant planet from 
the earth of any that are visible to the naked 
eye, and requiring twenty-nine years to make 
a revolution around the sun. Saturn appears 
to have been king of Crete, in whose time iron 
was said to have been discovered on Mount 
Ida, owing to a fire by lightning producing a 
conflagration in the woods. Vulcan wrought 
the new iron mines and made iron imple- 
ments. Ancient astrology claimed to foretell 
future events by the motion of the stars, and 
in this they were not far wrong, although they 
were not regulated in their predictions by 



THEOKY. 125 

cycles in motion, but by certain changes in 
the stars at certain times, aided by the celestial 
globe, and approaches, recessions, and aspects 
of the planets. Ancient astrology is now being 
superceded by modern science. All great 
events and convulsions in nature are now 
being explained and accounted for upon fixed 
physical causes. 

The deluge of Moses, if we look for a physi- 
cal cause, can be found in the precession of 
the equinoxes. The perihelion having a 
period of over 25,000 years, crossed the equator 
when the translation of the ocean from the 
northern to the southern hemisphere, would 
necessarily produce wrecks of countries, great 
physical changes, and floods upon the earth. 
For all history concurs in describing a deluge^ 
and science demands its recurrence about 
every 12,000 years. 

CONCLUSION. 

In view of the immensity of the interests 
involved, and the magnitude of the gains or 
losses incurred in the advance and decline of 
each price and panic cycle, and the conse- 
quences of the effects upon all business and 
trade, well might we be surprised and aston- 



426 benner's prophecies. 

ished at the opportunities afforded for accumu- 
lation and the chances for disaster, that by 
rule of cycles we are compelled to predict. 

Persons who undertake to search for coal 
outside of the coal fields, to mine for ore out- 
ride of the iron region, or prospect for any 
mineral by which through ignorance of the 
teachings of geology, they would be constantly 
led to squander their means for that which 
they can not find — could be compared to a 
person who undertakes to make money during 
the decline of prices. Failures in business are 
caused principally by our ignorance of when 
the ups and downs in prices are to take place. 
It has been stated that in the city of Boston, 
in a series of forty years after the year 1800, 
that only five in one hundred men remained 
in business; they had all in that time failed 
or died destitute of property. It has been 
stated and ascertained that not more than one 
per cent of the best class of merchants escape 
from failing in Philadelphia, and that not 
more than two per cent of the merchants of 
New York ultimately retire on an independ- 
ence during periods of twenty-five and thirty 
years. In Cincinnati, out of a list of some 
four hundred of the principal business men 
who were in trade in that city at a certain 



CONCLUSION. 127 

period, there were only five in business at the 
end of twenty years from that date. Such is 
mercantile success, and we see the same re- 
peated in all the leading and different branch- 
es of trade. 

As compiled by Dunn, Barlow & Co., of New 
York City, for the year 1873, throughout the 
country there were 5,183 failures of business 
men, with liabilities aggregating to $228,499- 
000 ; for the year 1874 there were 5,830 failures, 
with liabilities of $155,239,900; and the indi- 
cations of reports for 1875, are that the failures 
will number as many as in the former years. 
The greater proportion of these failures were 
brought about by losses sustained in the 
shrinkage of values, and decline of prices in 
each price and panic cycle. The people seem 
ignorant of the terrible teachings of history, 
and few are prepared to take advantage of 
these turns in trade ; and the great majority, 
through ignorance of the time when the ups 
and down in prices are to take place, are 
caught with incomplete enterprises upon 
their hands. 

It is noticed that the great majority of the 
business men of broken down fortunes, have 
become so not by accident, but by dealing too 
largely when prices were on the decline. In 



.128 benner's prophecies. 

the general declines of business after the 
panics of 1819, '37, '57, and '73, the loss to the 
nation through non-employment of labor and 
in various ways, is estimated to aggregate a 
sufficient sum in each of these reactions to 
pay our national debt. George Peabody laid 
the foundation of his fortune by buying Amer- 
ican securities in one of our commercial 
depressions, the price which, taken at the 
advance, led him on to competence. 

Reader, if you are young, life is short. You 
can not afford to make any mistakes, or miss 
any opportunities. You must take the tide 
at the advance. You can not wait a life time 
for the results of your experience; you must 
act upon what others know^, or your life will 
be spent to little use and without much accu- 
mulation of property. The cycles of pros- 
perity and adversity alternate inside of every 
ten years ; but few of these prosperous decades 
are yours in an active business life ; therefore 
do not waste your strength, or impair your 
energies on these periodic declines, as fore- 
shadowed in the future by the bright written 
pages of past history. 

Barnum has well said, in his celebrated 
lecture on the art of money getting, " You can 
not accumulate a fortune by taking the road 



CONCLUSION. 129 

that leads to poverty." The whole history of 
trade and commerce is full with the records of 
disaster, which has been brought about by mis- 
takes of men who could not read the letters 
upon the sign posts; while on the other hand 
our libraries are crowded with the chronology 
of man's success in business and trade, by 
taking the price and times at the advance, 
which leads on to fortune. 

Within the present century the increase of 
knowledge, improvements in machinery, and 
the discoveries in the arts and sciences, have 
advanced with a speed unparalleled in the 
annals of history. New light in various de- 
partments of human activity is now rapidly 
and continually breaking in upon the world. 
The invention of the steamboat, railroad, and 
telegraph, have imparted astonishing lessons 
to mankind. Each discovery of the laws of 
nature unfolds to the mind of man, new and 
exalting evidences of the wisdom of the Crea- 
tor. Astronomers who attempt to explore the 
immensity of the starry regions; to discover 
unseen and unknown worlds, and to find out 
the ways of God in the wonders of the heavens, 
are not in this enlightened age denounced as 
false philosophers and charged with an im- 
pious invasion of the domain of God. Each 
9 



130 benner's prophecies. 

rising science has fought and struggled with 
superstition and ignorance ; and in all ages no 
efibrt has been spared to blast them in the bud 
of their being, or crush them in the cradle of 
tbeii infancy. 

It has only been a short time before the 
present century, that if any one had predicted 
the crossing of the ocean in a vessel driven by 
steam, or of conveying news by electric agency 
around the earth, over the land and under the 
water in advance of time, or of daguerreotyp- 
ing the human face on a metallic plate by the 
light of the sun, and then chemically fixing 
it there; or of forecasting the future of the 
weather; production and prices by the rule of 
cycles as regulated by providence; such per- 
sons would have been considered visionary, 
their predictions regarded as contemptibly 
absurd; their authors the most disingenious 
of men, and their theories and systems treated 
with persecution and ridicule. 

The day is past for men to be forced to drink 
the juice of the hemlock for having peculiar 
notions of Deity, and sent in chains to the 
gallows, or imprisoned in gloomy dungeons 
for announcing scientific discoveries. Galileo 
was condemned by the inquisition of Rome for 
teach in£^ the doctrine of the earth's re vol u- 



CONCLUSION. 131 

tions. Galileo was right, and the world 
moves. 

Science has many things to achieve in agri- 
culture, manufacture, mining, and commerce. 
The science of price cycles is yet in the cradle 
of its infancy, but waiting its time to mature 
full development, to unfold its principles, and 
declare its oracles to all mankind, and to 
demonstrate that the causes and the laws of 
nature in production are not past finding out ; 
and that man in his onward path of progress, 
with the aid of electric science, will ulti- 
mately grasp the future, and make plain all 
the ways of God; which, when accomplished 
in this world, will be the acme of human 
knowledge, the consummation of human per- 
fection, and the end of human destiny. 



ADDENDA, 1884. 



To comply with an urgent demand from 
many business men for a new edition of these 
Prophecies, with tables brought down to date, 
the author has consented to make some addi- 
tions, and add a chapter on Eailroad Stocks. 
The old edition is left as it was originally pub- 
lished in 1876. 

While it has been an accepted saying, that 
history repeats itself, it has never been at- 
tempted heretofore to show how, and say when, 
it was systematically done, so as to extend it 
into the future — until the writer, in 1876, intro- 
duced to the public this little book, showing, by 
cycles made in the ups and downs in prices and 
in general business, how and when the times 
would repeat themselves in the future, which by 
the tept of the past eight years, is pronounced, 
by intelligent and thinking business men, to be 
one of the most remarkable commercial discov- 
eries of this country. 

This book has been read by many able men 
and they are puzzled at the results, as showing 
powerfully what they did not believe existed, 



ADDENDA, 1884. 133 

and so at variance with received opinions, they 
seem willing, from choice, to disbelieve it, if it 
were possible, but seeing the predictions and re- 
petitions justified by events, are disposed to give 
the author great glory. 

The discovery of this so-called law of repeti- 
tion, pertaining to business life, one would say 
can not be, for how the times change from war 
and other causes. The answer is : that the law 
has acted for fifty years, or as long as we have 
had any reliable statistics to test it; and this ac- 
tion has been going on through the introduction 
of railroads, steamships, the electric telegraph 
and cable, the panics of 1837, 1857 and 1873; 
also, through the Mexican war and our own 
€ivii war, and all else that has occurred to op- 
pose such regularity. And what more can a 
reasonable person ask to prevent its action? 
And yet it rides triumphant over all, and asserts 
itself up to the present time in a wonderful 
manner. 

In the commodity of Iron, the author takes 
the best tables this country affords, and with 
the formation of which he has nothing to do, 
viz.: those compiled by the American Iron and 
Steel Association of Philadelphia, and from 
these prices, for the past fifty years, are shown 
the highest and lowest years, which are system- 



134 benner's prophecies. 

atically apart, forming cycles which repeat 
themselves at certain fixed periods. These are 
facts, and if facts, they are true, whether they 
are believed or not. 

Iron is the strongest element of general busi- 
ness ; and when the price of iron is advancing 
and high, general business is always prosperous, 
and labor finds steady and remunerative em- 
ployment. On the contrary, when iron is de- 
declining and low, general business languishes 
and labor suffers its worst. This fact has been 
invariably the case during the whole history of 
the United States; and it is the great desider- 
atum of the age to discover the operation of a 
repetition in this commodity, and place it intel- 
ligently before the public, so that business 
men can shape their affairs in accordance 
with it. 

The uncertainty heretofore of all manufac- 
turing business, for a want of the knowledge of 
how long good trade or poor trade would con- 
tinue, of which it seems our sharpest and most 
experienced men have made serious and fatal 
mistakes, will now, by this knowledge of repe- 
tition, be enabled to forecast the run of future 
business, and give them more confidence by 
knowing when to contract or expand their op^ 
orations. 



PROPHECIES VERIFIED. 135 

Many a chance for a fortune is lost through 
over caution; and many a fortune is lost 
through being over sanguine, without a sure 
guide gained by the known laws of the opera-, 
lions of the past. The height and culmination 
of a speculative era is the best time for sinking 
capital beyond the hope of recovery, and com- 
mercial depression affords the best opportunity 
for profitable investment, as these images show 
under the head of Iron and Panic. 

PEOPllECIES VERIFIED. 

The author predicted, in 1875, that there 
would be a continuation of the depression in 
iron and general business to extend through 
1876 and 1877 — which prophecies were fulfilled. 

The further prediction then, was that prices 
would commence to advance in 1878 — which 
they did. The advance in iron commenced in 
the latter part of 1878, while railroad stocks 
had reached their lowest limit of decline in 
1877. These years— 1877 and 1878— were the 
end of the great commercial depression foreseen 
and predicted by the writer. 

The remarkable part of this prediction was in 
forecasting a turn in business affairs, and higher 
prices to follow, in spite of resumption of spe- 



136 benner's prophecies. 

cie payments. The general opinion at that 
time, was that resumption meant contraction 
and lower prices. 

During 1879 and 1880, the times improved 
and prices advanced, just as predicted. All 
trades and industries were active through these 
years. Iron reached its highest price in 1880, 
and stocks in 1881. 

The prediction also was that after 1881 prices 
would decline and the times grow worse, which 
prediction has been verified down to this date. 

The two important points, one of depression 
in 1877, and the commencement of better times 
in 1878, and to follow, and the other of great 
business activity and culmination in 1881, and 
the commencement of dall and poor trade, and 
to follow after that year, have been substantially 
verified. 

On page 49, of this book, there is said, " that 
the years 1882, '83, '84, '85, '86, '87 and '88, will 
be years of decline in the price of pig-iron, and 
years of depression in this business." Now, let 
us see what the secretary of the Iron and Steel 
Association says in his report made in 1883 : 
"In our last annual report, in June, 1882, the 
fact was noted, that the extraordinary activity 
in our iron and steel industries, which had com- 
menced in 1879, had culminated early in 1882, 



PROPHECIES VERiriED. 137 

when the wants of consumers became less ur- 
gent and prices generally began to decline. 
This reaction was not sudden nor violent, but 
was, indeed, so gradual and tranquil that it not 
only, for some time, excited no apprehension of 
impending stringency, but was actually imper- 
ceptible to many manufacturers whose books 
still continued to receive liberal orders at satis- 
factory prices. After the resumption of activity 
in the rolling mills, the price of rolled iron and 
pig-iron declined until the close of the year, 
and in JSTovember and December the market for 
these products was greatly depressed. Steel 
rails, which were the first of all iron and steel 
products to weaken in price — quotations having 
slightly receded as early as December, 1881 — 
steadily declined in price throughout the whole 
year, the sharpest decline occurring in Novem- 
ber and December, when the demand for future 
delivery almost came to an end. At the begin- 
ning of December, 1881, the average price of 
steel rails, at the mills, was |60 a ton ; but in 
December, 1882, the average price was only $39. 
In all the fluctuations of prices of iron and steel 
that have taken place in this country, we know 
of none so sweeping as this decline in the price 
of steel rails, if we except the fluctuations of 
1879 and 1880, and many of these wore entirely 



138 benner's prophecies. 

speculative. The causes which contributed to 
the serious, but in no sense disastrous, reaction 
in our iron and steel industries, in 1882, were 
many and various." 

The lowest limit for pig-iron being touched a 
few months later, and the highest daily price 
earlier than the specified limitations and culmi- 
nations in predictions made for the years 1877 
and 1881, do not affect the verification of the 
repetitions, as there were very important causes 
why these limits were prolonged and hastened 
a few months. In whatever can not be as ex- 
act as two and two are four, is no reason why 
'tis false and should be abandoned. 

Let the thinking mind of any far-seeing busi- 
ness man call into action all his mental energies 
— gird himself to the herculean task; let him 
put forth his proudest thought, grasp the sub- 
ject with a giant arm, and endeavor to forecast 
the future ups and downs of iron and general 
business in this country for the next ten j^ears, 
without the help of cycles and this law of repe- 
tition, as the author has set forth in these 
pages, and see how wide he will miss the mark. 

A prominent grain merchant, when ques- 
tions in regard to the probable effect of a Euro- 
pean war upon the market for American bread- 
stuffs, replied that definite predictions could be 



SIGNS OF THE TIMES. 139' 

obtained only from merchants who had been 
but a short time in the business ; the older he 
grew the more ignorant he became concerning: 
the future. 

SIGNS OF THE TIMES. 

The price of iron has steadily fallen through^ 
the year 1883. 

That the times are dull, can not be disputed. 
We have now the anamoly of an easy money 
market and hard times. From month tO' 
month, since 1881, commodities have fallen in 
l^rice, wages have been cut down, manufactories 
closed, workmen thrown out of employment, 
and at the present time the cities fairly swarm 
with a grand army of the unemj)loyed. There 
has not been for years a greater scarcity of 
trade bills, so little demand for the deposits that 
banks and discount houses hold. Unsound 
firms and mismanaged corporations are failing 
daily, a series of commercial failures larger 
than ever in this country. A merchant con- 
templating an opening up of a new department 
in trade, postpones it; a manufacturer needing- 
new machinery, puts off the purchase of it; a 
man intending to build a new house, waits. All 
these indicate poor trade and great prostration. 



140 benner's prophecies. 

in business. And this state of affairs in this 
■country, which we are compelled to describe as 
it actually exists, is likely to continue until we 
have a turn in iron for great activity, which can 
not come until 1888, as pointed out by the repe- 
titions of the past. 

All persons who are interested in pig-iron 
and railroad and other securities, are anxiously 
inquiring into the probabilities of iron declining 
more. With over one-third of the blast furnaces 
in this country standing idle, and the greater 
number of those in blast struggling to pay ex- 
penses, this inquiry is one of great and ex- 
•ceeding interest. 

The writer now proceeds to outline the future 
condition of trade, from this time to the close of 
this century. 

1884. 

Presidential year. The absorbing topic. 
What party is going to administer the Govern- 
ment for the next four years to be decided in 
the election this fall, will be a disturbing ele- 
ment in business, and will have the effect of 
casting its withering shadow before it, clogging 
the wheels of commerce and manufacture; 
hence, dull trade. Iron will continue to droop, 
with lower prices. 



SIGNS OF THE TIMES. 141 

1885. 

This year will show some resumption in the 
business of the country, the election being 
over and out of the way. There will be a little 
higher average for iron for this year, and this 
year only, with railroad stocks higher than in 
1884. 

1886. 

A renewal of depression in the iron and gen- 
eral business, and a lower average for iron. 
Free-trade agitation and legislation by Con- 
gress. The low duty tariffs have been shameful 
failures in this country, reducing the Govern- 
ment and people to a deplorable condition. 
The low-tariff era, from 1857 to 1861, was one 
of the darkest periods ever seen by the labor- 
ing people of America. Stocks lower. 

1887. 
Continuation of the same dull trade of 1886^ 
with no hope for iron this year. 

1888. 

Presidential year; all business prostrated 

and exhausted. A general complaint of hard 

times all over the country. Banks failing and 

stocks to their lowest point. Iron and stocks 



142 benner's prophecies. 

^will touch their lowest limit in this decline, and 
turn upward in this year. 

1889. 
A great speculative era opening up. Hurrah, 
for business ! Iron advances. ]^ow for a 
-Boom. 

1890. 

G-reat activity in general business. Iron and 
stocks advancing and bounding upward, from 
the beginning to the ending of this year. A rep- 
etition of the year 1879. 

1891. 
This era of speculation and great prosperity 
'Comes to a close this year with a Panic. A 
commercial revulsion and general reaction in 
all business after this year, and down goes trade 
for a series of years. 

1892, 1893, 1894, 1895, 1896, 1897. 
Dull years and poor trade. 

1898, 1899. 
Good trade and an active business in all in- 
dustries, winding up this 19th century in the 
height of a speculative era. 



SIGNS OF THE TIMES. 143 

It will be noticed that there are to be only 
two period of j'ears, from this time until 1900 
when we will have great activity in general 
business, and these are given below in the fu- 
ture. 

The former prominent active business periods 
of advances in iron were from 

1834 to 1837. 
1843 to 1845. 
1850 to 1854. 
1861 to 1864. 
1870 to 1872. 
1878 to 1880. 

FUTURE. 

1888 to 1891. 
1897 to 1899. 

It seems from the above that the advance and 
activity in iron is but a few months at a time 
while the periods of decline are numbered by 
years and of long duration. However, it 
should not be a subject of too much complaint 
when we think of the locust — only a week's 
song in every seventeen years. 



144 



BENNER S PROPHECIES. 



AVERAGE YEARLY PRICES FOR PIG- 

IROX. 



YEARS. 


PRICE. 


TONS 


YEARS. 


PRICE. 


TONS. 


1844 


25| 


, , 


1863 


35i 


947,604 


1845 


291 






1864 


59i 


1,135 996 


1846 


27| 






1865 


46i 


931 582 


1847 


301 






1866 


46| 


1,350,343 


1848 


261 






1867 


44i 


1,461,626 


1849 


22| 






1868 


39i 


1,603,000 


1850 


20| 






1869 


40| 


1,916,641 


1851 


21f 






1870 


33i 


1,865,000 


1852 


22f 


, 




1871 


35i 


1,911,608 


1853 


36i 






1872 


48| 


2,854,558 


1854 


36| -7 


36^21. 


^ 1873 


42| 


2,868 278 


1855 


27f 1 


^84,17 


3 1874 


30 i 


2,689,413 


1856 


m £ 


83,13' 


r 1875 


25 i 


2,266,581 


1857 


26f 7 


98,15 


7 , 1876 


22i 


2,093,23S 


1858 


22i 7 


05,09^ 


t ■ 1877 


18f 


2 314585 


1859 


. 23| 8 


40,62' 


J ' 1878 


in 


2,577,361 


1860 


22| £ 


19,77( 


3 1879 


2U 


3,070,875 


1861 


20i 7 


31,54^ 


t 1880 


28i 


4,295,414 


1862 


23| . 7 


87,66^ 


I 1881 


25i 


4,641,564 








1882 


25| 


5,178,122 






FAILURES. 







As compiled by R. G. Dun & Co., of New 
York City, for the year 1883, there were over 
nine thousand traders failed in business; and, 
with the exception of the year 1878, there were 
more failures in number in 1883 than in any 
year in the history of this country. 



FAILURES. 145 

To quote from their circular of January, 1884 : 
" Under such circumstancess the inquiry is a 
most anxious one, as to what is the actual busi- 
ness outlook for the opening year. If, with all 
that has happened in the past of a favorable 
character, disasters of such magnitude have 
occured, what is to be expected with the loss of 
confidence which these calamities have caused, 
with the restricted credit accomodation, lessened 
business, and the steady depreciation in values, 
which seem to be the daily experience." 

!N"ow,thewriterundertakes to state, that the ca- 
pacity of this country to overproduce is out of all 
proportion to the power and ability to consume. 

This fact was very plainly exemplified in the 
iron business during 1879. Just so soon as the 
people saw that iron had started upward, every 
old furnace trap in this country, that had been 
idle for years, was repaired and j)ut to work, 
and run to its full capacity. All the ore, coal 
and timber lands were optioned, and every body 
seemed to be going into the iron business; and, 
in the spring of 1880, it was plainly to be seen, 
that there was to be an enormous production of 
pig-iron. 

The fact of the business was, that there were 
a million of tons more iron made in 1880 than 
in 1879, and the consequence was, that the up- 



146 " benner's prophecies. 

ward march in the price had to halt in that year 
— and this very over production has ruined the 
iron trade, and brought about unprofitable gen- 
eral business to this day. 

Take any trade or industry in this country, 
where the people are free to engage in it, and 
not hampered by any restrictive laws, and the 
moment that prices rise in any product or com- 
modity, it seems that every body — like a flock 
of sheep — goes in that direction, and we soon 
have an over production, and down goes the 
price for a number of years. What can be said 
of any one production in this respect can be 
applied to general business; and no matter if 
the country in itself is sound, and the ability of 
consumers to absorb and pay for their wants 
and luxuries, large emigration and great 
growth, the startling fact present itself that 
business can and does stagnate and becomes 
very much depressed in these repetitions of the 
long terms of decline in iron. 

Better times can not come for general busi- 
ness, until the price of iron shows that it is in 
demand in the industries of this country. And 
to answer the above inquiry, the record of the 
number of failures is here given, and the ups 
and downs in iron in the past and extended in- 
to the future, showing how long these numerous 
fiailures must continue. 



FAILURES. 



147 



NO. OW in^ILTJRES. 



1854 






iron nig 


1855 








1856 








1857 
1858 
1869 


4,932 

4,225 
3,913 


^^ 




1860 


3,676 


^^.--''^^ 




1861 


6,993 <; 


Iron low. 




1862 
1863 


1,652 

495 


^ 




1864 
1865 


520 
530 




Iron high, 


1866 
1867 
1868 
1869 


1,505 

2,780 
2,608 
2,799 


^^^ 




1870 


3,546 <- 


Iron low. 




1871 
1872 
1873 


2,915 
4,069 
5,183 


"""" — 


Iron high. 


1874 


5,830 






1875 


7,740 






1876 
1877 
1878 


9,092 
8,872 
10,478.^ 


-"" Iron low. 




1879 
1880 
1881 
1882 
1883 
1884 


6,658 
4,735 
5,582 
6,738 
9,184 




Iron high. 


1885 




^^.^--^''^^ 




1886 




^^^.-''"''''^ 




1887 


^^ 


'-^"'^ 




1888 


< 


Iron low. 





148 benner's prophecies. 

It can be seen, by the foregoing diagram, that 
whenever iron is high there is a less number of 
failures, and as iron declines in price, and is 
low, the failures increase, and reach their great- 
est number when iron is at its lowest point. 

This showing indicates that there will be an 
Increased number of failures, over and above 
the number for 1883, before we get a turn in 
business affiairs, as we have not reached the 
lowest limit for iron in this decline. 

EATLEOAD STOCKS. 

The magnitude of the railroad interest of this 
country, has given it the position of the great 
leading element for speculation and invest- 
ment. 

This business has grown so extensively in the 
United States, in the past twenty years, that it 
excites admiration and wonder. 

In 1860 there were only 30,635 miles of fin- 
ished road, and about 250 members of the New 
York Stock Exchange. In this year there is 
over 120,000 miles of road, with over 1,000 mem- 
bers of the New York Exchange. 

This great activity in railroad building and 
stock operations have been the result of the 
gi'eciiback era. With the rapid settlement of the 



RAILROAD STOCKS. 149 

Western States under land grants, homestead 
laws and agricultural machinery began to in- 
crease immensely, since the war, the East and 
West railroad traffic — there having been built 
within the last three years more miles of rail- 
road than was built altogether before the war. 
The railroad system being now almost practi- 
cally completed east of the Mississippi river, 
we can reasonably expect to see the excitement, 
pertaining to so many new projected lines pass 
away, and the price for railroad stocks to take 
their legitmate place in the market, along with 
iron, and rise and fall in their value, as iron goes 
up and down, in the markets of our country. 

The time is past now for any great excite- 
ment in the activity and advance in stocks, and, 
for a few years following, we may look for con- 
tinued lower prices, with the exceptions of some 
upheavals that may be engineered and pro- 
duced by combinations and manipulations. 

The speculator who may attempt to bull the 
stock market, or the investor who may confide 
his means in these securities, thinking the turn 
has come for another boom in the stock market, 
will find, in the long run, that the market will 
gradually and surely go away from him — like 
the sand from under the feet of the fisherman, 
while standing in a stream of running water. 



150 benner's prophecies. 

There is a saying in Wall Street that there is 
one certain way to make money in stocks : 
*'Buy when they are cheap, and sell when they 
are dear."' This is the simplest kind of a rule, 
and it is a perpetual wonder that so many fail 
in getting the hang of it. 

In Wall Street, it is the operator who forms a 
correct theory as to the course of prices who 
makes the most money in the long run — mere 
traders are sure to get swami^ed. It is those 
who see furthest ahead, and have the courage 
to act upon their convictions, that secure the 
great prizes in the stock market. 

In the year 1860, some of the leading stocks 
at that time were very low — Erie, 8 ; New York 
and Harlem, 8; Michigan Southern, 5; Cleve- 
land and Pittsburgh, 5. 

In 1877, some low prices again — Erie, 5; 
Hannibal & St. Joe, 7 ; Ohio and Mississippi, 
21; Wabash,! 

There were two periods, one before the war 
and the other afterward, when stocks were very 
low, and those were the times to make invest- 
ments. The same opportunity for investors to 
catch stocks so low as in these two years will not, 
in opinion of the author, come around again until 
after the next panic, as described in this book ; 
as these two low periods were the effects of the 



RAILROAD STOCKS. 151 

revulsions in business caused by the panics of 
1857 and 1873. 

In the declines of 1865, 1867, and 1870, we 
did not have as low prices as after the panic of 
1873, when prices for stocks seem to almost 
vanish out of sight. 

In the present decline, from 1881 to 1884, we 
have something similar to the declines into 1867 
and 1870, and some lower points made this year 
than in 1865, 1867 or 1870, and, reasoning from 
what we know, stocks have been low enough in 
this year for this decline so far, and, therefore, 
we should not have lower points until after 
next year, the year 1885 being a steady and 
slightly up year for iron. In the j^'ears 1886 
and 1887 there will be lower stocks, running 
into 1888, when the turn comes again for ac- 
tivity in iron stocks and all business. 



152 



RAILROAD STOCKS. 




MILES OF RAILROAD IN U. S. 



153 



MILES OF EAILEOAD IN U. S. 



YEAR. 


MILES IN 


ANNUAL 




OPERATION. 


INCREASE. 


1820 . . 


23 . . 




1831 . . 


95 . . 


72 


1832 . . 


229 . . 


134 


1833 . . 


380 . . 


151 


1834 . . 


633 . . 


253 


1835 . . 


1,098 . . 


465 


1836 . . 


1,273 . . 


175 


1837 . . 


1,497 . . 


224 


1838 . . 


1,913 . . 


416 


1839 . . 


2,302 . . 


389 


1840 . . 


2,818 . . 


516 


1841 . . 


3,535 . . 


717 


1842 . . 


4,026 . . 


491 


1843 . . 


4,185 . . . 


159 


1844 . . 


4,377 . . . 


192 


1845 . . 


4,633 . . 


256 


1846 . . . 


4,930 . . . 


297 


1847 . . 


5,598 . . 


668 


1848 . . 


5,996 . . . 


398 


1849 . . . 


7,365 . . . 


1,369 


1850 . . . 


9,021 . . . 


1,656 


1851 . . . 


10,982 . . . 


1,961 


1852 . . . 


12,908 . . . 


1,S26 


1853 . . . 


15,360 . . . 


2,452 


1854 . . . 


16,720 . . . 


1,360 


1855 . . . 


18,374 . . . 


1,604 


1856 . . . 


22,016 . . . 


3,647 


1857 . . . 


24,503 . . . 


2,647 


1858 . . . 


26,968 . . . 


2,465 



154 



BENNER S PROPHECIES. 



YEAB. 


MILES IN 
OPERATION. 


ANNUAL 
INCEEASK 


1859 . . 


28,789 . . 


1,821 


1860 . . 


30,635 . . 


1,846 


1861 . . 


31,286 . . 


651 


1862 . . 


32,120 . . 


834 


1863 . . 


33,170 . . 


1,050 


1864 . . 


33,908 . . 


738 


1865 . . 


35,085 . . 


1,177 


1866 . . 


36,801 . . 


1,742 


1867 . . 


39,250 . . . 


2,449 


1868 . . 


42,229 . . 


2,979 


1869 . . 


46,844 . . . 


4,615 


1870 . . 


52,914 . . 


6,070 


1871 . . 


60,283 . . . 


7,379 


1872 . . 


66,171 . . 


5,878 


1873 . . . 


70,278 . . 


4,107 


1874 . . . 


72,383 . . . 


2.105 


18T5 . . 


74,096 . . . 


1,712 


1876 . . . 


76,808 . . . 


2,712 


1877 . . 


79,089 . . . 


2,281 


1878 . . 


81,776 . . . 


2,687 


1879 , . . 


86,497 . . . 


4,721 


1880 . . . 


91,944 . . . 


7,174 


1881 . . 


. 101,733 . . . 


9,789 


1882 . . . 


113,329 . . , 


11,591 



WINTER PACKING OP HOGS. 155' 

WINTER PACKma OF HOGS— NET ANB 
GEOSS COST. 



SEASON. 


NO. PACKED. 


COST. 


COST. 






NET. 


GROSS 


1842-43 


675,000 






1843-44 


1,245,000 






1844 45 


790,000 


$ 3 30 


$ 2 65 


1845 46 


900,000 


4 85 


3 90 


1846-47 


800,000 


3 55 


2 85 


1847-48 


1,710,000 


3 25 


2 60 


1848-49 


1,560,000 


4 70 


3 75 


1849-50 


1,652,220 


2 66 


2 13 


1850-51 


1,332,867 


3 75 


3 oa 


1851-52 


1,182,846 


4 45 


3 56 


1852-53 


2,201,110 


6 01 


4 81 


1853-54 


2,534,770 


4 19 


3 35 


1854-55 


2,124,404 


4 21 


3 37 


1855-56 


2,489,502 


5 75 


4 60 


1856-57 


1,818,468 


5 94 


4 75 


1857-58 


2,210,778 


4 86 


3 89- 


1858-59 


2,465,552 


6 28 


5 02 


1859-60 


2,350,822 


5 91 


4 73 


1860-61 


2,155,702 


5 67 


4 57 


1861-62 


2,893,666 


3 03 


2 42 


1862-63 


4,069,520 


4 20 


3 36 


1863-64 


3,261,105 


6 70 


5 36 


1864-65 


2,442,779 


14 32 


11 46 


1865-66 


1,785,955 


11 67 


9 34 


1866-67 


2,490,791 


7 22 


5 78 


1867-68 


2,781,084 


7 95 


6 36 


1868-69 


2,499,873 


10 22 


8 18 


1869-70 


2,635,312 


11 53 


9 22; 



156 benner's prophecies. 



SEASON. 


NO. PACKED. 


COST. 
NET. 


COST. 
GEOSS. 


1870-71 

1871-72 
1872-73 


3,695,251 
4,831,558 
5,410,314 


6 58 
5 15 
4 66 


5 26 
4 12 
3 73 


1873-74 
1874 75 
1875-76 


5,466,200 
5,566,226 
4,880,135 


5 43 

8 33 

8 82 


4 34 

6 60 

7 05 


1876-77 
1877-78 


5,101,308 
6,505,446 


7 18 
4 99 


5 74 
3 99 


1878-79 
1879-80 
1880-81 
1881-82 
1882-83 


7,480,648 
6,950,451 
6,919,456 
5,747,760 
6,132,212 


3 56 
5 22 

5 80 

7 58 
7 85 


2 85 
4 18 
4 64 
6 06 
6 28 



CORN. 



15T 



COEN. 



VUAE. 


PBOD UCTION. A VERA GE 

VALUE PER BU, 


1840 . . . 


377,000,000 




1850 . . 


. 592,000,000 




1860 . . 


838,000,000 




1862 . . 


533,387,230 . 


. 34 


1863 . . 


397,839,212 . . 


. 69 


1864 . • 


530,451,403 . . 


. 99 


1865 . . 


704,427,853 . 


. 46 


1866 . . 


867,946,295 . . 


. 68 


1867 . . . 


768,420,000 . . 


. 80 


1868 . . 


906,527,000 . . 


. 62 


1869 . . . 


874,320,000 . . 


. 75 


1870 . . 


1,094,255,000 . 


. 54 


1871 . . 


991,898,000 . 


. 48 


1872 . . . 


1,092,719,000 . ' 


. 39 


1873 . . , 


932,274,000 . 


. 48 


1874 . . . 


850,148,500 


. 64 


1875 . . . 


1,321,069,000 . 


. . 42 


1876 . . 


1,283,827,500 


. . 37 


1877 . . 


1,342,558,000 


. . 35 


1878 . . . 


1,388,218,750 . 


. . 31 


1879 . . - 


. 1,547,901,790 . 


. . 37 


1880 . . . 


1,717,434,543 . 


. . 39 


1881 . . 


1,194,916,000 . 


. . 63 


1882 . . 


. 1,617,025,100 . 


. . 48 


1883 . . 


. 1,500,000,000 





158 benner's prophecies. 



THE WEATHER 

The author does not claim to be a weather 
prophet, as the weather seems to be one of the 
most fickle of all things under the sun. However, 
a chart is here given to show when the scorching 
heats and droughts, the great floods and pro- 
longed cold winters, have appeared at certain 
periods in this country, that seem to repeat the 
■order of their return in about every eight years. 
This order is extended into the future, showing 
the probabilities of the recurrence of these ex- 
tremes in the seasons, varying the crops, and 
affecting the price of corn and hogs. 

The extremes of rain-fall and great floods re- 
cur at regular periods of about eight years in 
the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. 

The periods of drought and extreme low 
v^ater occur regularly at almost equal intervals 
between those of high water. 

The repetition of long, cold and stormy win- 
ters coincide nearly with those of drought in 
recurrence and duration. 



THE WEATHER. 



159 



WEATHER CHART. 





YEARS 


YEARS 




WET. 


DRY. 




1850 




Plood. 


1851 
1852 
1853 

1858 


1854 
1855 
1856 
1857 


Plood. 


1859 
1860 
1861 

1866 


1862 
1863 
1864 
1865 


Plood. 


1867 
1868 
1869 

1874 


1870 
1871 
1872 
1873 


i'lood. 


1875 
1876 
1877 


1878 
1879 

1880 
1881 



Drought— Low Water. 
Drought — Low Water. 



Drought — Low Water. 
Drought — Low Water. 



Drought — Low Water. 
Drought — Low Water. 



Drought — Low Water. 
Drought — Low Water. 



160 benner's prophecies. 

1882 

Flood. 1883 

1884 

1885 

1886 

1887 Drought— Low Water. 

1888 Drought— Low Water. 
1889 

1890 

Flood. 1891 

1892 

1893 

The weather chart is designed to show, first, 
on the right, the group of four years of extreme 
heat and extreme cold; and second, on the left, 
four years of heavy rain-falls and great floods. 

The author does not claim that all the years 
in the groups on the right of the chart will be 
years of drought and heat and cold winters; 
neither will all those years on the left be years 
of excessive rain-fall. 

It is only asserted that there will be two of 
these years on the right of extreme heat and 
cold winters, and on the left at least one regu- 
larly returning year, in which there will be a 
great flood, as j)ointed out on the chart. 

On the right, in the first group of four years, 
there were extensive droughts in 1855 and 1856 ; 
and the winters of 1855-56 and 1856-57 were 
extremely cold. 

In the second group, there were extensive 



THE WEATHER. 161 

droaghts in 1863 and 1864, and the winters of 
1863-64 and 1864-65 were extremely cold. 

In the third group there were extensive 
droughts in 1871 and 1872; and the winters of 
1871-72 and 1872-73 were extremely cold. 

In the fourth group there were extensive 
droughts in 1879 and 1881, and the winters of 
1878-9 and 1880-81 were extremely cold. 

On the left, in the first group of four years, 
there was a great flood in 1851. 

In the second group there was a great flood 
in 1859. In the third group there was a great 
flood in 1867. 

In the fourth group there was a great flood in 
1875. In the fifth group there ws,s a great flood 
in 1883. 

From these records of the past thirty^ years, 
without going back to hunt down far-fetched 
data, the conclusions and probabilities are, that 
there will not be any very great floods in our 
rivers from this time till after 1889, with the ex- 
ception of the year 1886 (when heretofore there 
has been high waters the first year of these 
groups, of dry years), and, after passing the 
Spring of 1886, the river population can be 
assured of no extraordinary floods of high 
water till 1890 and 1891. 

Also, that there will not be any general 



162 benner's prophecies. 

droughts extending all over this country, with 
extreme heat, till after 1886; and that there 
will not beany excessive, prolonged cold winters 
until 1887. 

For the next two years, average seasons of 
rain-fall, gradually decreasing till 1887 and 
1888, when in these years there will be general 
-droughts and low water in the rivers. 

The winters of 1887-88 and 1888-89, will be 
extreme prolonged cold winters, with storms of 
snow. 

After 1888, the rain-fall will gradually in- 
crease till 1891, when there will be a great 
flood in the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. 

The year 1889 will be grasshopper year for 
the States and Territories West of the Missis- 
sippi river. 

STAGES OF THE OHIO RIVER AT CINCINNATI, 
OHIO. 

[From the Report of the Chamber of Commerce.] 



YEAR. 


HIGHEST. 


LOWEST. 


AVERAGE. 




Ft. In. 


Ft. In. 


Ft. In. 


1832 


64. 3 






1847 


63. 7 






1858 


43.10 


2. 5 


12.10 


1859 


55. 5 


3. 3 


17. 7 


1860 


49. 2 


5. 4 


16. 


1861 


49. 5 


5. 1 


19 1 


1862 


57. 4 


2. 4 


17. 5 


1863 


42. 9 


2. 6 


15. 


1864 


45. 1 


3. 1 


16. 8 



CORN AND HOGS. 163 



1865 


56. 3 


6. 8 


21.10 


1866 


42. 6 


4. 9 


19. 2 


1867 


65. 8 


3. 


17. 


1868 


48. 3 


5. 1 


18. 8 


1869 


48. 9 


5. 4 


19. 8 


1870 


55. 3 


3.10 


17.10 


1871 


40. 6 


2. 8 


11.10 


1872 


41. 9 


3. 


11. 8 


1873 


44. 5 


3. 8 


18. 5 


1874 


47.11 


2. 4 


15. 8 


1875 


55. 4 


4. 3 


18. 9 


1876 


51. 9 


6. 2 


18. 2 


1877 


53. 9 


3. 3 


15. 


1878 


41. 4 


4. 4 


16. 9 


1879 


42. 9 


2. 6 


14. 6 


1880 


53. 2 


3. 9 


17. 


1881 


50. 7 


1.11 


16.11 


1882 


58. 7 


6. 1 


22. U 


1883 


6Q. 4 


3. 7 


19. 5J 


1884 


71. Of 







COEN AND HOGS. 

The price of corn and hogs is moved up and 
down more quickly in their repetitions, by the 
changes in the weather and seasons, than the 
price of some manufactured commodities; for 
instance iron, which takes a longer term of 
years to bring about a large or small supply, as 
the cycle in hogs is only from five to six years, 
while iron a much longer term of years. 

In the repetitions of the ups and downs as 
given in this book, the low price for 1877 was 
continued into 1878, by the dread of resumption 
of specie payments, which resulted in keeping 



164 benner's prophecies. 

prices down into 1878 for hogs, iron, and other 
commodities. 

The last high year for hogs was fixed for 
1880. ISTow to assign a reason why the price 
continued to advance, after that year to 1882, 
for corn and hogs. 

Tt can only bo charged to the great drought of 
1881 not coming in the year 1880, its proper 
place. 

The former regularly returning droughts, as 
shown in the weather chart (which is introduced 
here for this purpose), were in the years 1855- 
56, 1863-64, 1871-72, 1879, skipping 1880, the 
high priced year in the cycle, and giving us 
the drought in 1881, which was an excessive 
dry summer, partially destroying the corn crop. 

This delayed disastrous drought being pre- 
ceded by the extraordinary long continued cold 
of the winter of 1880-81, which had already 
thinned out a great number of hogs, was the 
direct cause of the high prices being continued 
longer than the cycle denoted. 

The low point for corn and hogs is for this 
winter ; that is, for the packing season of 1883- 
84, which no doubt will show a lower average 
price than for the packing season of 1882-'83. 

The further prophecies are for a higher 



CORN AND HOGS. 165> 

average after this winter, till the packing sea- 
son of 1886-87. 

Now, to maintain prices about the present 
level, or to have a higher average for the next 
three years, there must be some failures in the 
corn or hog crops; and reasoning from what 
we know, that during the cold January of this 
winter the young hogs have died in considerable 
numbers. And in accordance with that which 
our weather chart indicates, the summer seasons 
for a couple of years, will be wet, with low tem- 
perature, and not favorable for large yields of 
merchantable sound corn. And the further in- 
dications are, that we will not have good corn 
crops until the dry weather of 1887 and 1888, 
when the price of corn and hogs will decline to 
a lower average, as they did during the dry 
weather of 1871 and 1872. 



166 benner's prophecies. 



HIGHEST AND LOWEST PRICES IN NEW YORK FOR 
MIDDLING UPLAND COTTON AND THE CROPS: 



YEAE. 


HIGHEST. 


LOWEST. 


BALES. 


1826 

1827 

1828 

1829 

1830 

1831 

1832 ■• 

1833 


14 


9 

8 
9 
8 
8 
7 
7 
9 




J-Tb 

12 
13 
11 
13 
11 
12 
17 










987,477 
1,070,438 
1,205,394 


1834 

1835 


16 
20 


10 
15 


1,254,328 
1,360,7^5 


1836 


20 


12 


1,425,575 


1837 


17 


7 


1,804,797 


1838 
1839 
1840 
1841 


12 
16 
10 
11 


9 

11 

8 

9 


1,363,403 
2.181,749 
1,639,353 

1,688,675 


1842 


9 


7 


2,394,203 


1843 
1844 


8 
9 


5 
5 


2,108,579 

2,484,662 


1845 
1846 

1847 
1848 


9 

9 

12 

8 


4 
6 

7 ' 
5 


2,170,537 
1,860,479 
2,424,113 

2,808,596 


1849 


11 


6 


2,171,706 



COTTON AND CROPS. 167 



1850 


14 


11 


2,415,257 


1851 


14 


8 


3,090,029 


1852 


10 


8 


3,352,882 


1853 


11 


10 


8,035,027 


1854 


10 


8 


2,932,339 


1855 


11 


7 


3,645,345 


1856 


12 


9 


3,056,519 


1857 


15 


13 


3,238,902 


1858 


13 


9 


3,994,481 


1859 


12 


11 


4,823,770 


1860 


11 


10 


3,826,086 


1861 


28 


11 






1862 
1863 

1864 


68 

88 

1.90 


20 
54 

72 










1865 


1.22 


33 


2,228,987 


1866 


52 


32 


2,059,271 


1867 


36 


151 


2.498,895 


1868 


33 


16 


2,439,039 


1869 


35 


25 


3,154,946 


1870 


25f 


15 


4,352,317 


1871 


21i 


14i 


2,974,351 


1872 


27| , 


18t 


3,930,508 


1873 


21f 


13f 


4,170,388 


1874 


18^ 


14f 


3,832,991 


1875 


m 


13tV 


4,669,288 


1876 


13f 


10| 


4,485,423 


1877 


^'^A 


1013 
16 


4,773,865 


1878 


12tV 


m 


5,074,155 


1879 


13| 


H 


5,761,252 


1880 


131 


mi 


6,605,750 


1881 


13 


10^6 


5,456.048 


1882 


13A 


lOi 





168 



BENNER S PROPHECIES. 









WHEAT. 








YEAB. PRODUCTION. AVERAGE 


VALUE PER BU. 


1862 . . . 177,957,172 ... $ 93 


1863 






173,677,928 






1 14 


1864 






160,695,823 






. 1 83 


1865 






148,522,827 






1 46 


1866 






151,999,906 






2 19 


1867 . 






212,441,400 






. 1 98 


1868 






224,036,600 






1 42 


1869 






260,146,900 






94 


1870 






235,884,700 






1 04 


1871 






230,722,400 






1 25 


1872 






249,997,100 . 






1 24 


1873 






281,254,700 






1 15 


1874 






. 309,102,700 






94 


1875 






292,136,000 






1 00 


1876 






289,356,500 






1 03 


1877- 






364,194,146 






1 08 


1878 






. 420,122,400 






77 


1879 






448,756,630 






1 10 


1880 






. 498,549,868 






95 


1881 






380,280,090 






1 19 


1882 






. 504,185,470 , 






88 


1883 






. 420,000,000 









WHEAT. 169 

The total production and average value per 
bushel of the wheat crops since 1862, are here 
given as compiled by the Department of Agri- 
culture. 

The author has never been enabled to form 
any cycles in the price of this cereal that would 
show any repetition of high or low prices that 
could be extended into the future. 

To judge of the surrounding conditions and 
circumstances, such as large visible supplies in 
this country and Europe, and the known large 
quantities in farmers' granaries, and good pros- 
pects for a large yield of the growing winter 
wheat — with a greatly lessened demand from 
foreign countries compared with the past few 
years — and the existing depression in general 
business in this country. These prospective 
supplies and probable demand indicate, that 
this country will have cheap bread for this year, 
1884. 

February 25th, 1884. 



FORECAST FOR 1887. 

(published JANUARY 8tH, 1887, IN THE "RECORD AND 
GUIDE.") 

My estimate at the present time of the future 
business situation for 1887 depends upon certain 
conditions and combiuations in and out of Con- 
gress. 

It is a well-established fact that the failure of 
Congress last session to act on the tariff and silver 
questions aided powerfully to bring about this 
fall an improvement in the stock market, and in 
some other lines of industry. 

The depression in business during the spring 
and summer of this year was principally caused 
by a dread of what Congress might do under the 
new administration. 

When Congress adjourned last summer, leaving 
the tariff and silver laws unchanged, which was a 
surprise, business men at once saw that they were 
safe until the next Congress convened, and, with 
the assurance at that time of good crops, partial 
confidence returned in general business, especially 
in the railroad industry, as it was apparent that 
the railroads would have plenty to do during the 
fall months. Speculation centered in railroad 

(171) 



172 benner's prophecies. 

stocks, which gave them an active market ; this 
influence also extended to the iron market. 

Yet, nevertheless, while there has been an up- 
ward movement in stocks, iron, and some other 
manufactured commodities, the products of the 
land have not entered into this commotion. The 
farmers do not realize that they are benefited by 
the improvement in the stock market and com- 
mercial situation. What they have to buy is at 
enhanced prices, while that which they have to 
sell remains near the lowest prices for years. 

If the improvement which was manifested in 
business this fall is an indication of continued 
iDctter times it seems to be one-sided. The scales 
were up on one side and down on the other. 

The advance in railroad stocks, and the better 
feeling in business was based with a temporary 
foundation upon what did not happen, which was 
the failure of Congress to reduce the tariff, to stop 
the coinage of silver, and the failure of the 
crops. 

Business improved because the calamities did 
not happen, and it was well for the country that 
they did not. 

The fear of what Congress may do is again upon 
the minds of the people, as demonstrated when 
Congress convened by a general tumble and col- 



FORECAST FOR 1887. . 173 

lapse of the stock market, putting prices back in 
ten days where they were four months ago. 

N(jw, I undertake to say — aud say it with em- 
phasis — that if the Congress of this winter, or 
during an extra session the coming spring, should 
reduce the tariff or stop the coinage of silver, or 
should we have a general drought during the next 
spring and summer to damage the crops severely, 
then, in either case, prices for railroad stocks, iron, 
and the products of other iudustries which have 
been stimulated this year will decline to a lower 
level, and the improvements will fade out of 
sight. 

Aside from all the economic theories as to the 
working of a low tariff in the long run, there is 
no denying the fact that the immediate effects of 
a reduction of duties would be depressed business 
in all our industries. 

This government should not allow such a dismal 
calamity as the prostration of our industries in 
this way for the sake of reducing its revenue. 

Congress should abolish the internal revenue taxes, 
which will cut down the surplus receipts to a fair 
limit, and the reduction in this way will not injure 
general business, and will avoid a growing stringency 
in the money markets, which is imminent by the con- 
thiued accumulation and locking up in the treasury of 
such a large share of the currency. 



174 benner's peophecies. 

To stop the coinage of silver in this country, 
would throw our silver production on English 
markets at greatly reduced prices, enabling the 
English merchants to buy their wheat and cotton 
of India at prices which would bankrupt American 
farmers. It would stop the improvement in bus- 
iness, cause lower prices to rule for every thing, 
and produce general distress in all our industries. 

TliC year 1887 is the time for the periodical re- 
turn of a general drought in this country. We 
have noticed its encroachments this year all along 
our Western border ; long-continued dry weather 
prevailed from Texas to Dakota. 

Should the drought return in 1887, it no doubt 
will extend eastward, covering the great wheat 
and corn-growing sections of our country, and if 
it should continue a sufficient length of time to 
damage the crops it will have the effect of curtail- 
ing grain freights East, and merchandise freights 
West, moving the scales the other way — stocks 
down and wheat up. Eastern merchants and 
manufacturers will become concerned about their 
goods, w^hile on the other hand creating a lively 
speculation in breadstuff's and provisions. 

The bright side of the future is plain. If Con- 
gress does not disturb the tariff' and the silver 
laws, and there should be no damage by drought 
to the crops, then we will have a repetition of the 



FORECAST FOR 1887. 175 

excitement in stocks during the fall of 1887, to 
last until the next session of Congress, when, 
again, we can expect to see a collapse in specula- 
tion and a sudden decline in prices. 

And if there should not be an extra session in 
the spring, there will be a better feeling in bus- 
iness quarters during the spring mouths, to con- 
tinue until the crops are determined, the outcome 
of which will decide as to good or bad fall trade. 

This is a great and growing country ; it is in a. 
splendid condition for unbounded development in 
all our industries. Plenty of good mouey — gold, 
silver, and paper; wonderful railroad facilities; a 
Western world on this continent to populate, and 
with the threat of lower duties abandoned, and a 
thorough high protective tariff enacted and con- 
tinued, with favorable monetary laws, our pros- 
perity and advance in our numerous industries 
will excel any thing recorded in all iiistory. 

SAMUEL BENNEK. 
DuNDAS, Ohio, December 25, 1886. 



176 benner's prophecies. 



FORECAST FOR 1888. 

This year, 1888, being Presidential year, coming 
as it does at the end of the cycle for low prices, 
will not be a good year for profitable business ; 
prices for iron and railroad stocks will be lower 
than in 1887. 

Since the assassination of Garfield, in 1881, 
business has been on the down grade ; and during 
these six years of declining prices there has not 
appeared any great or important event to make a 
turning point for the better in general business. 

The outcome of the election in 1884, and the 
change of administration, has had the effect to 
continue low prices for iron, railroad stocks and 
manufactured commodities. 

The drought of 1887, which cut the crops short, 
has changed the direction of prices for grain and 
provisions. 

Now, what is there to happen in this year, 
1888, of sufficient importance to change the tide 
for higher prices and for commercial prosperity? 

The most important future event in sight is the 
election in November. 

The commercial history of this country is noted 
for its speculative eras and depressions. Com- 
merce and finance move in cycles ; and when the 
cycles of low prices have completed themselves 



FOEECAST FOR 1888. 177 

we may rely, with the utmost certainty, that they 
will be followed by cycles of high prices. 

In speculative eras we have large advances in 
the prices of commodities, while the years of de- 
pressions are characterized by extensive declines 
' and stagnation in business. 

The cycles are distinguished for a variation in 
the price of pig iron of at least $30 per ton. We 
have not realized this advance since 1881. 

Now, to have an advance from the lowest in 
this depression of $30 per ton in the price of pig 
iron and to have general prosperity during the 
years 1889, 1890, and 1891 to make and complete 
a high-price cycle, in accordance with the iron 
cycle as made in my "Prophecies," there must be 
a, good and prominent cause for it. 

It can not be brought about or accomplished 
within this cycle by a reduction of the tariff, as 
now threatened. 

It now may be accepted as an axiom, that the 
immediate effect of a low duty tariff would be 
lower prices; to be followed afterward in a term 
of years by higher prices, to the benefit of foreign 
manufacturers. 

Also, that the immediate effect of the passage 
of a high protective tariff would be higher prices; 
to be followed afterward in a few years by lower 
prices, to the benefit of the consumers. 



178 benner's prophecies. 

Whenever we have had high prices for iron and 
merchandise under a low tariff, since the low duty 
of 1816, it was after our home manufactures were 
in ruin, and when foreigners had possession of our 
markets. 

Under the present extent and stability of our 
manufacturing industries it would require several 
years, after the passage of a low duty tariff, to- 
prostrate the business of this country, and after- 
ward to advance our market to exorbitant figures 
on foreign imports. 

Under the low duty tariff of 1816 our home 
manufactures were but few, and as a consequence 
British manufactures held possession of our mar- 
kets, and high prices ruled for all imported man- 
ufactured commodities, while our agricultural 
products and labor were at low prices. 

Under the low tariff of 1833, when our manu- 
factories were infant industries, it required twa 
years to stop our mills and furnaces, and then two 
years afterward to advance our market to the 
highest prices on foreign goods. 

Under the exclusive ad valorem low tariff of 
1846 (which is the most unfair tariff scheme that 
can be devised for the interests of this country 
and most desired by foreigners), it required a 
longer time to depress our domestic industries four 



FORECAST FOR 1888. 179 

years of declining prices and four years of ad- 
vancing markets to reach the highest, which was 
to the benefit of British manufacturers. 

Now, if a low duty tariff bill should be euacted 
by Congress this winter, and to be continued, 
either specific or ad valorem, it would require a 
number of years before our manufactories would 
be in a state of ruiu, and then before prices for 
foreign products could be advanced to a high 
figure. 

Therefore, to reduce the tarifl" duties this win- 
ter would not accomplish this end in time for our 
cycle, and consequently we can not consider the 
enactment of a low tariff as a cause for a turning 
point in this year. In tlie past fifty years, during 
the low duty Democratic administrations of Van 
Buren, Polk, Pierce, and Buchanan, iron and all 
manufactured commodities declined and remained, 
at a low price, with depressed business in our in- 
dustries at the close of each of tliese administra- 
tions. And when these administrations were suc- 
ceeded by the opposing party, which favored the 
protective policy, prices advanced to a high range 
and trade became prosperous. 

The Cleveland administration at the close of 
this year, like its predecessors, will have fulfilled 
its mission by continuing low prices. 

Eeasoning from analogy observable in these 



180 benner's prophecies. 

cycles, it is very evident that the coming three 
years, after 1888, will be unusually prosperous. 

Therefore it is a necessity of the situation, 
cyclically speaking, and a sign of the times, that 
the low tariff party must give way to the party 
which protects our industries and Assures at once 
general prosperity. 

The Kepublican party must and will be success- 
ful in the election this fall to produce this result. 
This event I predict, which will be cause and 
major question of the times to make a turning 
point this year from commercial depression to 
great speculative activity. 

The Republican party can and will solve the 
surplus problem — satisfactory to this country and 
without a sweeping reduction of duties on im- 
ports — and will restore prosperity by repealing 
any unfavorable laws that may be passed by 
Congress under Cleveland. 

This year, 1888, being the closing year in this 
cycle of low prices — seven years from 1881 — is 
the golden opportunity to commence the founda- 
tion for a business- If there is any benefit to be 
derived from a knowledge of these cycles in trade, 
it will be in taking advantage of them. 

Young men who are about to commence their 
business career should embrace the present oppor- 
tunity. There are but few of these chances in an 



FORECAST FOR 1888. 181 

ordinary life. It requires about ten years to com- 
plete an up and down in general trade. 

When the depressions which follow commercial 
crises reach their lowest limit, as determined by 
these price cycles, they afford the best opportunity 
for investment, and the height of speculative eras 
are the most dangerous periods to make a com- 
mencement in any enterprise. 

This year is the opportunity for investors to 
open a mine, to build a furnace, to erect a mill, to 
build a ship, to equip a railroad, and to make in- 
Testments in agricultural, commercial, and indus- 
trial operations. 

George Peabody laid the foundation for his for- 
tune by buying American securities in one of our 
commercial depressions. 

According to the weather diagram in my 
prophecies, the summer of 18§8 will be dry and 
hot, affecting the crops, and probably causing 
more damage than the heat of 1887. This will 
have a depressive influence on railroad securities, 
making the coming fall — September, October, 
and November — a good time to buy stocks cheap, 
for an investment to run a few years. We have 
passed the low point for grain and provisions, and 
prices for these products will take a higher range 
for several years to come. 

SAMUEL BENNER. 

DuNDAS, Ohio, January 2, 1888. 



